CVTox - Development of a Co-Culture Cardiovascular Toxicological Model

Cardiovascular diseases account for more than 150,000 annual deaths in UK, affect more than 5 million people and cost more than £30bn a year to treat. To tackle this problem, drug companies and academics are trying to find new ways to expand our understanding of the causes of cardiovascular disease, and develop new ways of treating them. Usually, this research involves the use of animal models. Tests in animals are often unable to accurately predict what will happen in a human when a drug is given, leading to unexpected harmful effects in patients. The aim of our project is to develop a model of the cardiovascular system, using human cells, in a circulating system to allow the cells to communicate and detecting their response to drugs using state-of-the-art biosensor chips. This physiologically-relevant model will be a major step towards study of cardiovascular diseases and therapies in the laboratory without using animals. The models developed in this project could help drug companies identify which drugs are going to be useful and which drugs will be harmful, helping them to develop safe and effective new treatments for cardiovascular diseases, and saving human and animal lives.