Precision robotics offers hope for heart disease treatment, claims research

Faced with this challenge, the research team developed a solution – a tiny robot equipped with a special z-shaped micropipette and a 3D imaging system that can insert a fluorescent molecule into drug-treated beating heart cells with speed and precision, allowing scientists to analyze the efficacy of the drug candidates.

Published in Science Robotics, the findings showcase the innovative technology and highlight its potential to revolutionize advanced therapeutics for heart conditions.

"Using this system, our team was able to identify five potential therapies for ACM," says first-author Dr. Wenkun Dou, a postdoctoral fellow at SickKids and U of T. “This type of discovery can only happen when experts from different fields come together.”

With collaborators at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in Spain, one of the drug candidates was already shown to reduce irregular heartbeats in an ACM preclinical model.

The future of heart treatment

For patients and families affected by ACM, this research holds potential to accelerate the discovery of new treatments and could effectively eliminate the need for invasive heart surgery. But thanks to the personalized approach to high-throughput screening, the research team believes the impacts could echo far beyond ACM as part of SickKids’ vision of Precision Child Health, a movement to deliver individualized care to every patient.

“The ability to model specific patient conditions and test therapies quickly and with high volume means that treatments can be tailored to the individual needs of each patient,” says Maynes. 

Reference:

Wenkun Dou, Guanqiao Shan, Qili Zhao, Manpreet Malhi , Aojun Jiang, Robotic manipulation of cardiomyocytes to identify gap junction modifiers for arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, Science Robotics, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adm8233.