Ncardia has collaborated with Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) on the development of an automated human cardiac microtissue platform for large-scale drug screening. The work has been published in Trends in Biotechnology and is a joint effort to improve the speed, reliability, and translational relevance of early-stage cardiac drug discovery.
The new platform enables thousands of compounds to be tested in a single run using stem cell–derived human cardiac microtissues. By combining automation with functional cardiac readouts, the system supports rapid prescreening of drug candidates while maintaining human biological relevance.
From the LUMC side, the work was led by Richard Davis, Associate Investigator at reNEW Leiden, with key contributions from Christine Mummery, Loukia Yiangou, Ben Johnson, and Tessa de Korte. Their combined expertise in stem cell–based cardiac disease modeling formed the scientific foundation of the platform.
Ncardia’s role focused on enabling the system to operate reliably at screening scale. This included automation of cardiac microtissue production, standardized manufacturing of iPSC-derived cardiac tissues, and integration of data acquisition and analysis suitable for high-throughput discovery workflows.
“By combining LUMC’s deep expertise in stem cell–based cardiac disease modelling with Ncardia’s automation, manufacturing, and analytics capabilities, we have created a scalable platform that brings human-relevant cardiac biology into early drug discovery,” says Shushant Jain, Director at Ncardia. “This collaboration allows us to bridge the gap between academic innovation and industrial application, enabling faster and more predictive cardiac safety testing and therapeutic discovery.”
Finally, the platform was developed within the Leiden Bio Science Park ecosystem, where collaboration between academic and industrial partners can accelerate the translation of advanced in vitro models into drug discovery and safety assessment.
Read the full article via LUMC to learn more about the platform and the underlying research.