Discussion

There is growing evidence to suggest that cardiomyocytes grown in 3-dimensional (3D) cultures offer a more physiologically relevant model and elicit different pharmacological responses to those grown in 2-dimensions (2D).

To investigate this, beating iPS-derived human cardiomyocytes were differentiated on either a classic 2D or 3D environment (using aligned electrospun nanofibres). The FLIPR Tetra system was used to visualise the potential of a number of pharmacological agents to modulate calcium mobilisation in both cell models. Specifically, we analysed beat count & frequency, amplitude of contractions and peak rise and decay to determine changes in the phenotypic profile.

We have compared responses from cardiomyocytes obtained from a number of commercial sources on 3D aligned fibres and our data suggests that beating iPS-derived human cardiomyocytes respond differently to pharmacological agents when grown on 3D aligned nanofibre plates compared to the standard 2D model.