Optogenetics-Enabled High-Throughput Technology for the Advancement of Personalized Medicine with in Human Ips-Cardiomyocytes

Optical targeting (stimulation or recording) allows distributed parallel access to thousands and even millions of cells and locations at the same time, and within the tissue setting; optical targeting is high-throughput by nature. The combination of optogenetic stimulation with optical imaging of electrical function in cardiomyocytes, i.e. the realization of all-optical electrophysiology in a high-throughput (HT) manner is essential for the rapid advancement of personalized medicine using human stem-cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPS-CMs). It represents one of the short-term achievable impact applications of optogenetics as all elements are ready for immediate translation. We have developed and optimized technology for automated acute and chronic monitoring of human iPS-CMs that enables high-quality high-content characterization of such patient-derived cells for disease modeling, drug screening and mechanistic studies of these heart cells and engineered tissues. Such approaches also can help in improving experimental design, removing bias, increasing reproducibility and strengthening predictive power for faster translation of basic science findings.