Accurately predicting how drugs affect the human heart is a critical challenge in preclinical development — current models frequently miss cardiotoxic compounds or falsely flag safe therapies, slowing the path to new treatments. Adult primary human cardiomyocytes are emerging as a powerful solution, offering native physiological and pharmacological properties that artificial cell models and animal models simply cannot replicate. Advances in donor heart recovery and cardiomyocyte isolation methods have expanded access to these cells, which have already demonstrated value in assessing cardiotoxicity risk and identifying new treatments for conditions like heart failure and atrial fibrillation. By incorporating data from adult human primary cardiomyocytes into structured decision-making frameworks, researchers can gain the holistic insights needed to more reliably predict drug effects on the human heart.

PUBLICATION: Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology  (2020)

AUTHORS: Najah Abi-Gerges, Andre Ghetti, Paul Miller