Improving assessment of drug-induced cardiac risk with mathematical electrophysiology models

Gary is a computational biologist working on the prediction of potential cardiac side-effects associated with a novel drug compound during its development. Pharmaceutical companies can already perform experiments to measure how drug compounds affect some of the ion channel proteins that control the electrical wave that activates the heart. Gary is using mathematical models of cardiac electrophysiology to integrate this information by performing simulations of the electrical activity of the heart at the cell and tissue levels. The aim is to predict any increased risk of disturbances to human heart rhythm earlier in drug development and more accurately than the existing animal-based safety tests.