Cardiac tissue platform for diagnosing myocarditis

This technology is an in vitro human cardiac muscle tissue platform that can be used to diagnose myocarditis.

Unmet Need: Less invasive method of diagnosing myocarditis

Myocarditis is often challenging to diagnose, especially in patients with autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) or rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The current method for diagnosing myocarditis is endomyocardial biopsy, which is an invasive procedure. There is a significant unmet need for diagnosing myocarditis using less invasive methods.

The Technology: Simple, non-invasive platform for diagnosing myocarditis

This technology is a platform with cultured human cardiac muscle tissues used to diagnose myocarditis with autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). The platform can measure calcium handling and force generation of the engineered cardiac tissue in response to a patient’s blood serum or isolated antibodies, allowing for diagnosis of myocarditis based on the measured changes in cardiac function. The platform consists of cell culture wells arranged between carbon electrodes that contain flexible pillars to suspend human cardiac muscle tissue cultured from a healthy cell line, allowing for measurements of tissue contractility. This simple, non-invasive method of diagnosing myocarditis is using a sample of patient’s blood serum or antibodies isolated from serum.

This technology has been validated with tissues engineered from a line of human iPS cells.

Applications:

Diagnosis of myocarditis from patient blood serum or antibody samples
Measurement of engineered cardiac muscle tissue contractility (including force generation)
Evaluation of calcium handling of engineered cardiac muscle tissues

Advantages:

Non-invasive
Measures several parameters in one device
Inexpensive
Compatible with standard microscopes

Lead Inventor:

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D.

Patent Information:

Patent Pending (WO/2023/014700)

Related Publications:

Tamargo MA, Nash TR, Fleischer S, Kim Y, Vila OF, Yaeger K, Summers M, Zhao Y, Lock R, Chavez M, Costa T, Vunjak-Novakovic G. “milliPillar: a platform for the generation and real-time assessment of human engineered cardiac tissues” ACS Biomater Sci Eng. 2021 Nov 8; 7(11): 5215–5229.

Tech Ventures Reference:

IR CU21222, CU22009
Licensing Contact: Cynthia Lang