Abstract

Exploiting Cardiac Microphysiological Systems For COVID-19 Drug Screening

Kevin Healy, Jan Fandrianto and Selfia Halim Distinguished Professorship in Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

Our work has emphasized creating both healthy and diseased cardiac and liver microphysiological systems (MPS) or ‘organ chips’, to address the costly and inefficient drug discovery process. While MPS are poised to disrupt the drug development process and significantly reduce the cost of bringing a new drug candidate to market, the technology is more robust and creates a whole new paradigm in how to conduct safety pharmacology science, and advances medicine in revolutionary ways. An emerging use of MPS is in the evaluation of repurposed drugs to treat COVID-19. While repurposed drugs are typically FDA-approved for monotherapy, most have not been tested in polytherapy with  anti-inflammatory or antibiotic medications typically employed as part of intensive care protocols. Since COVID-19 patient morbidity is highly correlated with myocardial injury, independent of pre-existing cardiovascular disease, this presentation will address examples of exploiting our human cardiac MPS as unique testbeds for rapidly assessing the cardiac liability of polytherapy of repurposed COVID-19 drugs. Preclinical data generated will inform clinical trial design for polytherapies for COVID-19 patients, particularly regarding risks of potential drug-drug interactions or identifying appropriate exclusion criteria, monitoring strategies, and dose adjustments to minimize cardiac liabilities.