PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Giuseppina Iachetta AU - Giovanni Melle AU - Nicolò Colistra AU - Francesco Tantussi AU - Francesco De Angelis AU - Michele Dipalo TI - Chronic cardiotoxicity assessment by cell optoporation on microelectrode arrays AID - 10.1101/2022.06.20.496820 DP - 2022 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 2022.06.20.496820 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/21/2022.06.20.496820.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/21/2022.06.20.496820.full AB - The reliable identification of chronic cardiotoxic effects in in vitro screenings is fundamental for filtering out toxic molecular entities before in vivo animal experimentation and clinical trials. Present techniques such as patch-clamp, voltage indicators, and standard microelectrode arrays do not offer at the same time high sensitivity for measuring transmembrane ion currents and low-invasiveness for monitoring cells over long time. Here, we show that optoporation applied to microelectrode arrays enables measuring action potentials from human-derived cardiac syncytia for more than 1 continuous month and provides reliable data on chronic cardiotoxic effects caused by known compounds such as pentamidine. The technique has high potential for detecting chronic cardiotoxicity in the early phases of drug development.Competing Interest StatementF.D.A. and M.D. are inventors of patent application WO2019116257A1, related to cell optoporation. F.D.A., M.D., F.T. and G.I. are shareholders of the Italian company FORESEE Biosystems srl, which works on cell optoporation systems. G.M. is chief executive officer (CEO), N.C. is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and M.D is Chief Strategy officer (CSO) of FORESEE Biosystems srl.