Assessing cardiac safety – from single ion channels to engineered heart tissue

Cardiac safety remains a major cause of attrition in drug discovery. Compounds that are promising in early-stage screening may nonetheless fail in later development due to proarrhythmic liability, conduction abnormalities, or impaired myocardial contractility. Such failures are costly and often reflect limitations in the predictive power of early-stage assays. There is, therefore, a clear need for screening strategies that can more reliably identify cardiac risk earlier and support more informed compound selection.