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Heart-on-a-Chip Systems: Disease Modeling and Drug Screening Applications
Published
Author(s)
Derrick Butler, Darwin Reyes-Hernandez
Abstract
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide, casting a substantial economic footprint and burdening the global healthcare system. Historically, pre-clinical CVD modeling and therapeutic screening has been performed using animal models. Unfortunately, animal models oftentimes do not completely recapitulate human physiology, leading to a poor translation of therapeutics from pre-clinical trials to consumers. Even those that make it to market can be removed due to unforeseen side effects. As such, there exists a clinical, technological, and economical need for systems that faithfully capture human (patho)physiology for modeling CVD, assessing cardiotoxicity, and evaluating drug efficacy. Heart-on-a-chip (HoC) systems are a part of the broader organ-ona- chip paradigm that leverages microfluidics, tissue engineering, microfabrication, electronics, and gene editing to create human-relevant models for studying disease, drug-induced side effects, and therapeutic efficacy. These compact systems can be capable of real-time measurements and ondemand characterization of tissue behavior and could revolutionize the drug development process. In this review, we highlight the key components that comprise a HoC system followed by a review of contemporary reports of their use in disease modeling, drug toxicity and efficacy assessment, and as part of multi-organ-on-a-chip platforms. We also discuss future perspectives and challenges facing the field, including a discussion on the role of standardization is expected to play in accelerating the widespread adoption of these platforms.
Butler, D.
and Reyes-Hernandez, D.
(2024),
Heart-on-a-Chip Systems: Disease Modeling and Drug Screening Applications, Lab on A Chip, [online], https://doi.org/10.1039/d3lc00829k, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956614
(Accessed October 9, 2025)