102523InoCardia: Novel human-cell based assay for assessment of cardiovascular liabilityClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKWhen drugs/chemicals are developed to treat a particular disease or for human use purposes they sometimes have side effects that cause damage to the heart. Occasionally these dangerous side effects are only recognised after the drug/chemical has been marketed & taken/used by thousands of people. This is a significant risk to human health & is costly to the pharmaceutical industry when a dangerous product is withdrawn from market. Although side effects of drugs can be caused by many things, one area of great concern is the effects of drugs on the force that heart muscle can produce during its role in pumping blood around the body. Current drug testing relies on the use of animals such that often the tests do not do well in predicting the effect on humans. Development of a human heart-cell contractility assay would greatly improve the under-standing of the human relevance of non-clinical findings; a chemical might cause a change in cardiac contract-ility in animals, but not humans & vice versa. We aim to develop a test that uses human heart cells in a way that can efficiently test many drugs/chemicals used in high-value industries & reduce the risk of causing any damage to the heart.