InVitroSys

Applications

Cardiotoxicity screening in intact adult myocardium

MyoDish combines living myocardial slices (LMS) with continuous force recording and programmable electrical stimulation. You can follow drug effects in the same tissue over days rather than hours.

Discuss your study

Why myocardial slices?

  • Adult, multicellular cardiac tissue with its native three-dimensional architecture
  • Longitudinal measurement of contractile function in the same sample
  • Electrical challenge protocols reveal excitability and pro-arrhythmic effects

Why the time window matters

Cardiac injury can emerge over repeated dosing. Biomimetic culture has maintained human myocardial contractility for weeks to months (Fischer et al., 2019), which enables chronic pharmacology and repeated functional testing.

Example study design

  1. Human or large-animal myocardium

    Prepare 300 µm living myocardial slices.

  2. Mount and stabilise

    Defined preload, continuous pacing and force recording.

  3. Dose over days

    Vehicle, oncology compound, with or without a cardioprotective strategy.

  4. Run scheduled challenges

    Force–frequency, refractory period and pacing threshold.

  5. Add endpoint biology

    Histology, Ca2+ imaging, RNA and protein analysis or metabolism.

What you can see in one experiment

Contractility

Continuous twitch force and diastolic tension

Excitability

Pacing threshold and maximum capture rate

Kinetics

Time to peak and relaxation

Arrhythmia

Effective refractory period and its rate dependence

Published evidence

Studies with biomimetic culture of living myocardial slices.

Human slices: doxorubicin and dexrazoxane

Over a 10-day exposure, 1 µM doxorubicin caused a donor-dependent loss of force and excitability. Dexrazoxane protected slices from susceptible donors.

van der Geest et al., British Journal of Pharmacology 2025

Human slices, 1 µM doxorubicin for 10 days
Contractile force under doxorubicin, as percent of time-matched vehicle In slices from susceptible donors, force fell to about 45 percent of vehicle on day 2, 34 percent on day 7 and 31 percent on day 9. 0255075100125baselineday 2day 7day 9 Vehicle = 100 % baseline: 100 % of vehicle*day 2: 45 % of vehicle*day 7: 34 % of vehicle****day 9: 31 % of vehicle %

Force in slices from susceptible donors as percent of time-matched vehicle; n = 7–8 slices, mean ± SEM; * p < 0.05, **** p < 0.0001 vs. vehicle. Adapted and recalculated from van der Geest et al., British Journal of Pharmacology 2025, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Show data
Time pointForce (% of vehicle)SEM
baseline1000
day 24513
day 73416
day 93118

Blinded proarrhythmia test in pig slices

Five drug candidates from the Comprehensive in vitro Proarrhythmia Assay (CiPA) list and two controls were tested blinded in three independent laboratories. All arrhythmic drugs were detected, including their mode of action on Na+, Ca2+ and hERG channels and the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger.

Shi et al., Cardiovascular Research 2023

Where LMS can add value in oncology R&D

De-risk compounds

Detect contractile or electrical liabilities that are not captured by a single-ion-channel or immature-cell assay.

Compare protection

Test cardioprotective strategies alongside the cardiotoxic agent in tissue from the same donor.

Explore heterogeneity

Investigate donor- or disease-dependent susceptibility in intact adult human myocardium.

Scope and limitations

LMS are a research model and not a regulatory-qualified safety assay. They have no systemic pharmacokinetics or coronary perfusion, and the donor is the biological replicate. MyoDish is a laboratory instrument for research and not a medical device.

Plan your study with us

Tell us about your compounds, tissue source and planned exposure. We help you set up chambers, protocols and readouts.

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