Overcoming the Innovation Gap
Heart failure affects 4% of the US population, yet treatment options are primarily symptomatic, including blood thinners, assistive devices and heart transplant. Patients today face a 50% 5-year survival rate upon diagnosis.
Our approach is to engineer human cardiac organoids that function similarly to adult human heart tissue, enabling us to directly target therapeutics to the heart.
We aim to address the root cause of heart failure and restore heart function.
Our Cardiovascular Discovery Engine
We’ve developed HeartDyno, our cardiac organoid discovery engine, using scalable, authentic and predictive cardiac organoids that reflect adult heart phenotype, toxicology, and physiological function. HeartDyno combines these with a deep multi-omics data approach, uncovering novel therapeutic targets and candidates that offer better efficacy and safety profiles in humans.
Scalable
Engineered from stem cells at scale
Authentic
Mature phenotype and physiology
Predictive
Translates to clinical observation
News & Views
March, 2021
Research identifies cause and potential treatment for COVID-19-induced heart damage
QIMR Berghofer researchers in collaboration with Dynomics and Resverlogix have discovered some of the ways COVID-19 damages the heart, and identified a class of drugs that could potentially protect or reverse this cardiac injury.
April, 2020
The state of the art in cardiac organoids
Structural and functional changes following infarction in a human heart can be modeled with human cardiac organoids set in hypoxic gradient and stimulated with the neurotransmitter noradrenaline.
March, 2019
Thousands of tiny hearts grown in lab to test new drugs
When it comes to determining whether new drugs will be effective, our team looked to mini beating human hearts. Thousands of them.
Publication Highlights
Inflammatory Cardiac Dysfunction
🔥 NEW! Mills, R. J. et al. BET Inhibition Blocks Inflammation-Induced Cardiac Dysfunction and SARS-CoV-2 Infection. Cell, Online Now, 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.026 (2021).
🔥 NEW! Robson, A, Preventing cardiac damage in patients with COVID-19. Nature Reviews Cardiology, Online Now, 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.026 (2021).
HeartDyno Human Cardiac Organoid Platform
Mills, R. J. et al. Drug Screening in Human PSC-Cardiac Organoids Identifies Pro-proliferative Compounds Acting via the Mevalonate Pathway. Cell Stem Cell 24, 895-907.e6 (2019).
Mills, R. J. & Hudson, J. E. Bioengineering adult human heart tissue: How close are we? APL Bioengineering 3, 010901 (2019).
Voges, H. K. et al. Development of a human cardiac organoid injury model reveals innate regenerative potential. Development 144, 1118–1127 (2017).
Mills, R. J. et al. Functional screening in human cardiac organoids reveals a metabolic mechanism for cardiomyocyte cell cycle arrest. PNAS 114, E8372–E8381 (2017).
Cardiac Regeneration and Gene Profiling
🔥 NEW! Sim Choon Boon et al. Sex-Specific Control of Human Heart Maturation by the Progesterone Receptor. Circulation (2021).
Quaife-Ryan, G. A. et al. β-Catenin drives distinct transcriptional networks in proliferative and nonproliferative cardiomyocytes. Development 147, (2020).
Quaife-Ryan G. A. et al. Multicellular Transcriptional Analysis of Mammalian Heart Regeneration. Circulation 136, 1123–1139 (2017).
Porrello, E. R. et al. Transient Regenerative Potential of the Neonatal Mouse Heart. Science 331, 1078–1080 (2011).
Contact
Targeted therapies to restore heart function.