Edge-Detection for Contractility Measurements with Cardiac Spheroids

Abstract

© 2017 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. A continuous increase in xenobiotics development is largely driven by the demand for therapeutics, domestic and industrial uses. These xenobiotics are typically associated with xenobiotics induced toxicity. Currently, safety screening of xenobiotics rely on invivo assessment using a number of laboratory animals such as mouse, rat, monkey although they have over the years proven convenient in toxicity assessment. Simultaneously, these assessment are animal-intensive and costly. The currently available standard in-vitro testing models include chiefly primary tissue and immortalized cell line. Although, these established in-vitro models have various advantages but associated drawbacks such as species variation, non-compatibility for high throughput screening of drugs, ethical concerns etc. have forced to develop a more relevant and predictive in-vitro toxicity model. Over the years, advances made in stem cell research have allowed to use the stem cells, typically derived from embryos i.e., embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or reprogrammed from mature somatic cells i.e., induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), for readily and efficient toxicity studies. However, ESCs also suffers from ethical issues but various published reports revels that ESCs derived cells have been used efficiently in toxicity assessment and generation of iPSCs has raised the bar of stem cell based toxicity assessment up to a new altitude.