Heart modelling leads path to new therapies

A major workshop recently held by the European Science Foundation suggests that new heart drugs and therapies could one day be accurately tested in computerized in silico models. The workshop highlighted how recent progress in imaging technologies was helping heart modellers overcome the big dilemma they have faced up till now - actually proving that the models really are an accurate representation of the real human heart.

"Validation of the models is very important, and was raised at the workshop," said Blanca Rodriguez, scientific coordinator of the ESF workshop, and senior cardiac researcher at Oxford University, Europe's leading center for cardiac modelling. "One of the problems has been that it is much easier to get experimental data from animals than humans." Such animal data can help calibrate some aspects of the models, but only data from human hearts can fine tune them to the point at which they can actually make useful predictions and test therapies, she noted.

Corroborative data is now becoming available as a result of dramatic progress in imaging techniques that can observe cardiac activity externally without need for invasive probes. "We are now getting data at very high resolutions, and that allows us to model things in more detail, with greatly improved anatomy and structure," commented Dr Rodriguez.