Poster - Functional and pharmacological differences between the contractility of axoCells iPSC derived atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes assessed on the FLEXcyte 96
Abstract
Commercial human iPSC-derived ventricular cardiomyocytes have been available from multiple providers for over a decade, with extensive use in research, drug development and toxicology testing due to their appropriate modelling of primary human ventricular cardiomyocytes. Less work has been performed on human iPSC-derived atrial cardiomyocytes despite the clear phenotypic and pharmacological differences between atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes, rendering the standard ventricular cardiomyocytes a poor model for atrial research.
This is of particular concern as atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common form of arrhythmia worldwide affecting over 33M people and rising, being a co-morbidity with obesity, stroke, dementia and congestive heart failure. Despite the clear clinical need for better AF treatments there are limited therapeutic options with poor success rates and the 1-year mortality rate for patients with AF remains around 25%. Therefore, there is a clear need for better, more human models of AF.
To better explore the chamber-specific differences in contractility and pharmacology between hiPSC-derived atrial and ventricular cardiomyocytes Axol have partnered with innoVitro GmBH to examine the phenotypic and pharmacological differences in contractility of Axol’s two forms of cardiomyocytes on their FLEXcyte 96 platform.
Here we demonstrate that Axol’s commercially available axoCells hiPSC-derived isogenic atrial (ax2518) and ventricular (ax2508) cardiomyocytes. show distinct physiologically-relevant phenotypes in terms of contractility and pharmacology. This demonstrates the suitability of these cells for performing chamber-specific studies in vitro in a more human physiologically-relevant model.
