Abstract 12829: Biomimetic Cardiac Tissue Culture Model to Emulate Cardiac Physiology and Pathophysiology Ex Vivo

Abstract

Introduction: There is an urgent need for a reliable in vitro system to accurately replicate the cardiac physiological and pathological environment for drug testing. The limited availability of human heart tissue culture systems has led to inaccurate interpretations of cardiac-related drug effects. Our group developed a culture system for pig/human heart slices that enables functional and structural viability for 6 days using continuous electrical stimulation and enriched media. This culture system can more reliably detect cardiotoxic effects compared to hiPSC-CMs. However, by day 10, the slices undergo cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation and fibrotic remodeling making them inadequate for long-term drug testing. Hypothesis: To determine whether incorporating physiological mechanical, and humoral cues within the culture system can fully emulate cardiac physiology and pathophysiology in culture. Methods and results: We have developed a novel c ardiac t issue c ulture m odel (CTCM) that can electro-mechanically stimulate heart slices with physiological (0 to 80 mmHg) preload and afterload during each cardiac cycle. After 12 days in culture, this approach alone partially improved the viability of heart slices but did not maintain the structural integrity. Therefore, following a small molecule screening, we found that incorporating 100 nM tri-iodothyronine (T3) and 1 μM dexamethasone (Dex) into our culture media preserved the structural integrity of the slices for 12 days. When combined with T3/Dex, the CTCM system fully maintained the transcriptional profile, viability, metabolic activity, and structural integrity for 12 days at the same levels as fresh heart tissue. Furthermore, to test the ability of the CTCM to emulate cardiac hypertrophy, increasing the peak pressure to 140 mmHg resulted in induced cardiac hypertrophy within 6 days in culture as indicated by a 3-fold increase in NT-ProBNP release, increased NFATC4 and P-ERK expression, and increased cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area. Conclusions: This new CTCM heart slice culture system incorporating physiological electromechanical and humoral cues can emulate cardiac physiology and pathophysiology in culture, which could be used for drug screening for new therapeutics and cardiotoxins.