Coloring the heart beat

Project Gist

Coloring the heart beat

Keywords

Heart-Disease, Nature-Inspired Materials

Background, Purpose, and Project Achievements

Heart disease is the second most prominent cause of mortality in Japan, and the biggest health-related killer in the United States. It is very difficult to accurately pre-screen drugs designed to alleviate heart disease. This is not only in finding a drug for treating heart disease, but also for screening out drugs that can potentially cause heart problems down the road, after drug approval. An example is Vioxx, which killed thousands of people and led to extensive lawsuits. Such a drug may have cost over a billion dollars to develop from the time of discovery.

A strong barrier to effective pre-screening is that state-of-the-art diagnostics are based on methods that focus on single cells and the activity of a group of cells . To solve this issue, we used the inspiration of nature, and color that changes with structure as is observed in butterfly wings. Using an international team from Hungary, Spain, and Japan, we developed a novel scaffold system that presents different colors upon change in the contraction pattern of live cardiomyocytes that may be used as an essential, quantitive tool for cardiovascular pharmacology in the future.

Future Prospects

We are presently exploring future grants to develop this research into a broader research program through the use of Hungarian and Spanish Bilateral research funding with Japan.

Figures

Principal Investigator