Investigating Heart Damage Caused by Cancer and Anti-cancer Drugs

Animal Free UK Funded Summer Studentship

Background to project:
Cancer survivors often experience heart complications many years after their chemotherapy due to the irreversible damage cancer drugs inflict upon the heart. Many studies use animal to explore the reasons why this happens, however in a move away from the use of animals, researchers have established a 3D human heart cell model which ‘beats’ in the dish and contains all the essential cells of the heart. There have been pilot studies that have used this model and tested biological activities to detect mechanisms of toxicity in response to cancer treatments, however growth of this human cell model still relies upon some animal products as nutrients to keep the cells alive.

In this summer project, animal free products will be used to re-establish the human heart-in-a-dish and compare our animal free system and recapitulate key experiments for comparison with our existing model data sets.

This approach could change the way cardiotoxic screens of drugs are conducted and provide new approaches to guide other researchers seeking to do similar.