Automated calcium measurements in live cardiomyocytes

Heart failure due to hypertension, infarction, or other factors, is a leading killer of men and women in modern society and involves, at its base, a debilitating loss of cardiomyocytes. Recent studies indicate the feasibility of regenerating lost cardiomyocytes by transplanting embryonic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (ESCMs) or mobilizing resident stem cells. To realize the potential of stem-cell based therapies, we hypothesize that it will be extremely beneficial to develop technology and instruments for high throughput, high content screening (HCS) of drugs and genes for their ability to stimulate the formation of functional, contractile cardiomyocytes. Contractile activity is the primary physiological function of cardiomyocytes and abnormal contractility is potentially lethal. We discuss the first phase of the development of an instrument dedicated to distinguishing differentiated ESCMs from undifferentiated non-cardiac background cells using automated cell-by-cell quantification of contractile-calcium transients as the primary assay.