Electrical stimulation of Cardiomyocytes in a Heart-on-a-Chip
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a serious health status affecting 33 million worldwide. The drug development for AF is cost intensive and a time-consuming process. Organ-on-Chip technology has the potential to revolutionize drug development. While conventional processes involve animal testing, this number can be reduced significantly by using human stem cell derived cardiomyocytes. The goal of this internship is the implementation of gold electrodes in the current Heart-on-a-Chip design, the culture of hiPSC derived cardiomyocytes in the chip and the pacing of cells using the sputtered electrodes. The success of the pacing is followed by fluo-4 staining of the calcium influx. The project also involves the automation of medium exchange using a small-scale pipetting robot. After the proof-of-principle, atrial fibrillation can be simulated by high-frequency pacing of cardiomyocytes and the effect of drugs can be studied.
Project duration:
Start: 03-02-2025
End: 04-07-2025
Educational programs:
– Biomedical Lab Research or a comparable study program
Interested, please send your motivation letter and CV before the 8th of December 2024 to Michelle Fleermann (m.fleermann@saxion.nl)