Researchers have developed a new technique that allows monitoring the heartbeats of miniature human heart tissues grown in the lab, without the need for microscopes, in a move that could accelerate drug development and reduce reliance on animal testing.
The technique relies on measuring minute changes in pressure caused by heart tissue as it contracts within a liquid medium, allowing researchers to monitor its activity moment by moment in a simple and non-invasive way.
These tissues are known as cardiac organoids, which are three-dimensional models grown from human heart cells in a laboratory. Although they do not represent a complete heart, they mimic the way the heart muscle contracts and responds to drugs, making them an important tool for studying heart disease and testing new treatments before moving to clinical trials.
Cardiac organoids are increasingly used as an alternative to animal models because they are based on human cells, provide results that are closer to the human body's response to drugs, and can be produced in large quantities at a lower cost.
However, the study of these organelles still faces technical challenges, as most current methods rely on microscopy and image analysis, a time-consuming process that is difficult to scale up to include large numbers of samples. Also, the transfer of organelles between the culture environment and the microscope may affect their integrity and increase the likelihood of contamination.
To address this problem, researchers from the University of New South Wales, in collaboration with the Victor Chang Heart Research Institute, developed a new system called the Biomechanical Wellboard (BWP).
The system works differently from traditional techniques; instead of imaging the organelle's movement, it measures the minute ripples it generates as it contracts within the fluid. Researchers liken this mechanism to the ripples that spread across the surface of water when a stone is thrown into it, where highly sensitive sensors detect minute changes in pressure and convert them into electrical signals that can be analyzed in real time.
The idea for the system was inspired by the "lateral line" of fish, a sensory organ that helps them sense water movement and changes in surrounding pressure.
Associate Professor Huang-Fong Fan, the lead author of the study from the University of New South Wales, said the aim of the technique is to provide a more efficient tool for studying human organoids, overcoming the limitations imposed by traditional methods and animal models.
She added that the technology allows for the direct measurement of the mechanical performance of organelles, without the need to constantly transfer them to the microscope, which makes experiments faster and reduces the risk of contamination.
Researchers believe that one of the most important applications of the technology is to accelerate drug development, as it allows monitoring the response of heart tissue to new treatments as soon as they are added, which helps to assess their effectiveness and exclude unpromising compounds at early stages.
Personalized medicine applications can also be supported, by growing cardiac organoids from the patient's own cells, and then testing different drugs on them to choose the most appropriate treatment or dosage.
The team pointed out that the technology could also help reduce reliance on animal testing, especially since a large percentage of drugs that succeed in animal testing do not achieve the same results when tested on humans, which reinforces the need for models based on human cells.
Despite the promising results, the technology is still in the development stage, and researchers are working to increase the number of samples that can be examined at the same time, improve the sensitivity of the sensors, and expand their use to include other types of organelles, such as nervous and muscle tissues.
The study's findings were published in the journal Nature Sensors.
