Impact: Research at Brown

Testing the cardiac side effects of oncology drugs

Brown Invents

Kareen Coulombe
Kareen Coulombe

Kareen Coulombe, associate professor of engineering, and team members Bum-Rak Choi, associate professor of medicine (research), and Ulrike Mende, MD, professor of medicine, received a BBII award in 2020 for research to make therapeutic drugs safer for the heart. With an additional round of BBII funding in 2022, the team continued to develop an in vitro cardiac tissue model platform for drug discovery and cardiotoxicology testing. The team is further expanding the model to be able to test for cardiac side effects of oncology drugs as well as to identify drugs that can be used to mitigate or treat these side effects. 

The electrical activity of up to 35 three-dimensional human heart microtissues generated from stem cells can be recorded simultaneously using a high-speed fluorescence microscope, enabling high-throughput cardiotoxicity testing.
The electrical activity of up to 35 three-dimensional human heart microtissues generated from stem cells can be recorded simultaneously using a high-speed fluorescence microscope, enabling high-throughput cardiotoxicity testing. 

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Impact is a magazine devoted solely to the University’s research. It tells the stories of faculty and student achievements, and their influence in solving critical problems in the world through their exploration.

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