Heart-In-A-Jar to Test New Drugs-Novoheart Pumps new life
You probably don’t think about it as often, yet it continues to pump with its faithful, steady beat- carrying blood to all your organs. Heart is truly a wonderful organ; but how about one beating rhythmically, suspended in a jar? Bizarre? No, Amazing rather.
Canadian-backed biotech Novoheart has created stem cells, which in turn can build a blood-ejecting mini “cloned” human heart. The potential is huge. And it’s a world first.
The first thing people say when they see the tiny hearts in action company co-founder Kevin Costa says is, “Wow, it’s actually beating.… It’s actually working like a heart.” He says the Novoheart technology is different from other stem cell-derived testing methods because of the three-dimensional structure of his company’s “Heart-in-a-jar.” “We can actually measure the hollow chamber that is pumping, so we can monitor how much pressure the organ is generating, like the blood pressure.”
The Novoheart is an actual beating heart-like structure made of stem cells that could revolutionize the path to market for new drugs.
Creating the heart valves is a multi-step process where scientists reprogram
blood cells into stem cells that are then manipulated into heart cells. Millions of these heart cells form a Jello-O like solution that grows into a mold taking the shape of the “heart.” Once fully formed, the mini heart beats allowing scientists to measure the pace, similar to a heart rate.The researchers involved in the company say the drugs could be tested on bio-artificial human hearts to see their impact, levels of toxicity, and side-effects. Many people who take hard-hitting cancer drugs end up with cardiovascular issues, or even die from heart failure because the drugs are so toxic. Doctors cannot tell who is more susceptible to drug-induced heart problems. This would provide a safe environment for patients and drug companies to try out drugs.
Currently, the patients are guinea pigs, but in time, these mini-hearts could be put to work to find out both the positive and negative effects of a drug. Hundreds of thousands of mini-hearts at a time could be developed according to them and can further be personalized if need be.
Novoheart was recently listed on the TSX Venture Exchange and has received financial backing from Canadian investors.
“I think it’s a very topical and relevant industry segment,” says Darren Devine with CDM Capital Partners, which has a stake in the company. CDM invested in Novoheart because it believes companies like it can be disrupters to the pharmaceutical industry.
In the stem cell industry, scaling up research into practical opportunities has been a problem, Devine says.
“What investors are looking at now is how do you take this science experiment and turn it into a commercial opportunity?”
To survive, he says companies need to prove they can get big, sustainable contracts from pharmaceutical companies that will have commercial value on a long-term basis.
People outside the scientific community often find technology of the type that’s happening at Novoheart something of a head-scratcher. But despite still being in the early stages and futuristic by nature, it’s something already getting attention from the global pharmaceutical industry.
