Better treatment of cardiac arrhythmias thanks to a heart-on-a-chip

Verena Schwach, UT researcher at the Department of Applied Stem Cell Technology, conducts research into better, tailor-made treatment methods to combat cardiac arrhythmias. A heart-on-a-chip is being developed, a technology that in fact creates a mini heart. The chip mimics the functioning of the human heart. During the Life Science event (April 5) she will provide more insight into the latest developments in her research.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

According to Schwach, a heart-on-a-chip can improve research into cardiac arrest, cerebral infarction and heart failure: “At the moment, the current models have a limited predictive value for humans. This has to do with the major differences between humans and animals. That is why we want to develop an in vitro organ-on-a-chip model based on a human model, in our case a heart-on-a-chip model.”

Modern resources were used to fund her research. “We received a start-up grant from the Dutch Heart Foundation with the help of crowd funding in 2019,” says Schwach. “We wanted to start immediately, but there were some delays due to the corona pandemic. We actually started at the end of 2020, beginning of this year.”

More pleasant environment

Now that the research is ongoing, new challenges are continuously emerging: “The biggest challenge at the moment is to make it 'fun' for the differentiated heart muscle cell on the chip. Cells usually do not find this a pleasant environment and changing that is certainly a challenge.”

Ultimately, the goal is to find personalized medications that tackle heart rhythm disorders more effectively: “We want to generate a platform so that medications can be tested more quickly or even completely new medications can be discovered. You can test much faster than in an animal. Moreover, we are working towards animal-free research.”

Necessary, because the current medication for combating cardiac arrhythmias is far from optimal: “Many medications that are currently on the market for cardiac arrhythmias mainly combat the symptoms, but not sufficiently the underlying cause. Some medications can also be dangerous because they are not specific enough.”

Extensive investigation

During the Life Science event, Schwach will delve deeper into her research methodology surrounding the development of a heart-on-a-chip, she says: “I will explain how we will differentiate a heart muscle cell from a stem cell, and how we will make cells for the atrium and chamber. But also how we test whether we have obtained the right muscle cells. We are also already working on CRISPR-Cas, where we make genetic modifications to our stem cells. This way you can introduce mutations based on the patient you are treating. We will also show something about that.”

In the meantime, Schwach's research is still in full swing. She hopes to publish more results later this year: “The chip is actually already there, but the results still show too much variation. You want the same results every week, so I'm still working on that. I hope to be able to release the first research results in April or May.”

Would you like to attend Verena Schwach's lecture? Register for the Life Science Event free of charge via the website.