“Cardiotoxicity, or toxicity to the heart, is a major cause of failure of new drugs in mid- to late-stage development. Most cardiotoxicity testing is currently done in animals; these animal-based tests are expensive and time-consuming, and can fail to fully predict effects in humans.”
NIH.gov 2023
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Design Team
Jack Steren: Washington University in Saint Louis Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate. Focusing on the device design and components.
Joseph Levin: Washington University in Saint Louis Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate. Dual Degree with Assumption University with a BS in Biology and BA in Mathematics. Focusing on the data acquisition methods and necessary design for clear data.
Haynes Rosson: Washington University in Saint Louis Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate. Dual Degree with Lake Forest College with a BA in Physics. Focusing on data processing and analysis.
Client
Christian W. Zemlin, PhD, MSc: Associate Professor of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in Saint Louis. His research focuses on cardiac electrophysiology and developing instrumentation to and measure bioelectric signals in cardiac tissue. Involved in Cardiac related research and development for over 30 years, Dr. Zemlin has an intimate knowledge of pharmaceutical -cardiomyocyte interactions.
Need Statement
There is a need for a device that quickly screens for cardiotoxicity in trial drugs being developed by pharmaceutical companies and labs, so companies and labs can decrease production and research time and bring pharmaceuticals to market faster.
Project Scope
During drug development there are thousands of promising potential candidates that need to be screened before undergoing clinical trials. Automated cardiotoxicity testing would be beneficial to patients, pharmaceutical companies, and research labs trying to bring these pharmaceuticals to market. With a device capable of high throughput screening of cardiotoxicity in human cardiomyocytes, pharmaceuticals would be able to be approved more efficiently, saving time and money. Such a device would also provide an alternative that is more efficient and cheaper than animal testing, decreasing the number of animal trials. The product is going to be automated with the goal of having minimal human interaction, to decrease testing time and user error. The main purpose of the design is to detect cardiotoxic effects, such as variations in action potential, that compromise normal cardiac function. The testing process should be fast compared to manual testing so that it is time beneficial. In order for the project to be completed there must be a device that will perform cardiotoxicity tests more efficiently than a human by running automatically and with comparable accuracy to modern methods.