Cardiac Function

Streamline cardiovascular disease and cardiotoxicity research

Cardiomyocytes have unique mechanical, electrophysiological, and structural properties and rely on coordination of electrical impulses with mechanical contraction to power the heartbeat. Assessing their electrical activity, contractility, and cell morphology is necessary for a holistic understanding of cardiac function and health. Pixel™ is the only tool that simultaneously measures all these properties on the same set of cells in real time, breaking through barriers in scalability for cardiovascular research and cardiotoxicity screening.

Cardiac insights powered by microchips

Pixel’s unique semiconductor-to-live-cell-interface enables multi-modal measurement of cardiac cell function and structure in a single assay. Microchips at the bottom of each well in a standard 96- or 384-well Pixel plate provide flexible arrays of electrodes that function as contractility, electrophysiology, and impedance measurement channels. This allows real-time, high-resolution capture of electrical activity, contractility, and structure on the same set of cells in spontaneously beating or paced cultures.

“As novel microphysiological systems make the transition from bench to bedside, their implementation in high throughput drug screening, personalized diagnostics, disease modeling, and targeted therapy validation will bring forth a paradigm shift in the clinical management of cardiovascular diseases.”

Portillo-Lara et al., Biomaterials (2018)

Investigate cardiac function and structure in one multiplexed assay

Track real-time changes in cell contractility, electrophysiology, and health simultaneously

Single-parameter readouts limit insight into cardiac function, and don’t provide context on cell health or structure. Capturing all these properties requires multiple assays on different sets of cells along with complex data integration. Pixel generates longitudinal, multi-modal data on the same cardiomyocytes, integrating functional and structural insights.

Video shows human cardiomyocytes from FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics maturing, with changes in cell culture dynamics (left), conduction (middle), growth (top right), and percentage of beating cells (bottom right)

Characterize human cardiovascular disease models

IPSC-derived disease models are powerful predictors of treatment efficacy and disease progression, but lack of effective characterization tools limits their utility. Pixel’s high-throughput Cardiac application captures functional and structural changes in complex 2D or 3D cell models with high spatial resolution, while also enabling identification of distinct cell populations.

Changes in conduction velocity across cultures with different cardiomyocyte(CM):fibroblast ratios representing cardiac fibrosis.

Generate multi-modal insights at scale in cardiotoxicity and pharmacology studies

Determining cardiac effects of compounds is a key component of every therapeutic pipeline – cardiotoxicity is one of the biggest reasons drugs ultimately fail. By combining longitudinal measurements of mechanical, electrophysiological, and structural cell properties, Pixel enables robust screening of multiparametric changes in cardiac tissue. Its microplate-based format allows high-throughput screening and detection of potential pharmacological impacts on the heart much earlier in the discovery process.