Another heart on a chip

Startup has grown a "heart on a chip" that can shorten the time of drug testing to one year

Veronika Elkina, Rusbase

New York-based startup Tara Biosystems is growing heart cells in the laboratory, with the help of which it is possible to track possible side effects before testing medicines on humans. Fast Company correspondent Ben Schiller saw the innovative "heart on a chip" with his own eyes and shared his impressions.

When I found myself in the Tara Biosystems laboratory, I looked into a microscope and saw a bubble made of artificially grown heart tissue. This bubble reacts to electrical impulses, just like a real heart is pounding under the influence of brain signals. The "artificial heart" is much smaller than the real one – its length is only three millimeters.

The Tara startup appeared three years ago during research at Columbia University. It grows tissue from stem cells and nourishes them for 12 weeks. The scientists then investigate how the tissue reacts to various medications to find out what effect they can have on a real heart. The system is already used by more than ten pharmaceutical groups.

Photo: Tara Biosystems

A miniature heart can be tested for electrical, chemical, mechanical, biological (gene expression) and structural changes that medications produce. In total, the laboratory refrigerator contains 200 samples of cardiac tissue.

Toxicology is just the beginning. The next stage of the project will be to check the tissues of a sick heart for the effects of medications. With the help of this system, it will be possible to conduct tests on individual samples of cardiac tissue and find out how a particular person's heart will react to the medicine. At the same time, the period of testing of medicines may be reduced from ten years to one year. According to Ushio, stem cells, artificial tissues and computer calculations will be able to replace the usual method of trial and error, which is now used in laboratories.

The heart tissue pulsates like a real organ.

Perhaps in this way it will be possible to completely abandon animal testing. All tests will be conducted on virtual copies of human organs even before tests involving real people. Moreover, we are talking not only about the heart cells, but also about other major organs.

"Of course, this will not happen soon," added the head of Tara Biosystems Misty Ushio. "But in the near future [our system] may lead to scientists using animals for more valuable projects where there is already a lot of data [obtained by other testing methods]."

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