Are stem-cell cardiomyocytes a viable cellular reagent for automated patch-clamp?

ICH guidelines state that compounds in drug discovery must be tested for inhibition of hERG cardiac
ion channel. It is often prudent to test compounds against a wider array of cardiac ion channels, e.g.
hNa_V1.5 and hCa_V1.2 (Kramer et al., 2013). The CiPA initiative will demand testing and additional ion
channel targets as well; namely hNa_V1.5 late current, hKir2.1, hKvLQT1 and Kv4.3 (Gintant et al., 2016).
These ion channel assays are all amenable to automated patch-clamp and have typically been run
using recombinant cell lines over-expressing an individual ion channel. The aim of this research was to
investigate whether human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes are a useful,
affordable and predictive cellular reagent for use on the QPatch automated patch-clamp system.