ACEA Biosciences – A Part of Agilent Launches the xCELLigence RTCA ePacer to improve the Quality and Functionality of hiPSC-Cardiomyocytes for Drug Discovery, Safety Pharmacology, and Cardiac Disease Research

Human induced pluripotent stem cell cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CM) are increasingly being used as a human-relevant in vitro model system for drug discovery, safety pharmacology, and cardiac disease research. While these cells are “fit for purpose” for a number of applications, their inherent immature phenotype has limited their applicability for many in vitro studies.

“The challenge with hiPSC cardiomyocytes is that they are more like neonatal cardiomyocytes rather than adult-like cardiomyocytes,” said Yama Abassi, Ph.D., Vice President of ACEA Biosciences – A Part of Agilent. It is imperative to improve the maturation status and functionality of hiPSC-CM in order to obtain a more relevant and predictive model system that can be used for downstream applications. While there are a number of techniques being investigated, prolonged electrical pacing has been shown to be an efficient and reliable way to enable functional maturation of hiPSC-CM. The xCELLigence ePacer allows for a scalable, efficient, and high throughput method for maturing hiPSC-CM in vitro. Moreover, the specially designed microelectronic plates (E-Plates) are compatible with other orthogonal readouts such as calcium and high content imaging.

Built upon the same groundbreaking technology of the xCELLigence RTCA Cardio and CardioECR systems, the xCELLigence RTCA ePacer uses electrical stimuli to precisely stimulate and pace cardiomyocytes cultured in E-Plates. With the pacing protocols on the ePacer, researchers can produce functionally mature cardiomyocytes within 1-3 weeks, depending on the cardiomyocyte types and the pacing protocol details. Importantly, after pacing is performed, the ePacer software is able to generate metrics to verify the extent of maturity of the paced cardiomyocytes. These functionally matured cardiomyocytes have much improved responses to inotropic compounds and are more predictive of ion channel modulators. In addition, a number of relevant ion channels, structural proteins, and sarcomeric proteins are upregulated in these paced and functionally mature cardiomyocytes.

The xCELLigence RTCA ePacer is designed to be part of an integral workflow and to revolutionize the way scientists use hiPSC-CM for their research. “By providing researchers access to cardiomyocytes with characteristics that match more closely to human adult heart cells,” says Dr. Abassi, “we believe that the ePacer will give them more confidence in their assays.

About xCELLigence® Real Time Cell Analysis (RTCA)

ACEA’s xCELLigence RTCA instruments are being used in both academia and industry for life science applications ranging from cancer immunotherapy, bacterial biofilms, vaccine development and cardiotoxicity testing. With the xCELLigence technology, scientists can non-invasively monitor the behavior of cells by quantifying cell proliferation, morphology change, and attachment quality in a label-free, real-time manner.

About ACEA Biosciences, A Part of Agilent Technologies

ACEA Biosciences, a part of Agilent Technologies, is a pioneer in the development and commercialization of high-performance cell analysis platforms for life science research. ACEA’s xCELLigence® Real-Time Cell Analysis instruments and NovoCyte® Quanteon flow cytometers are used in pre-clinical drug discovery and development, toxicology, safety pharmacology, and basic academic research. More than 3,000 instruments have been placed globally, and have been used in more than 2,000 peer-reviewed publications. For more information visit: http://www.aceabio.com. Follow on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. Based on more than 50 years of insight and innovation, Agilent instruments, software, services, solutions, and people provide trusted answers to customers’ most challenging questions. The company generated revenues of $4.91 billion in fiscal 2018 and employs 14,800 people worldwide. Information about Agilent is available at http://www.agilent.com. To receive the latest Agilent news, subscribe to our Newsroom. Follow Agilent on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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