Industry News: Pluriomics BV Announces Cooperation with ACEA Biosciences to Advance Cardiovascular Drug Discovery and the Expansion of its Services Portfolio

Pluriomics and ACEA Biosciences (ACEA) have announced a cooperation to advance together cardiac drug discovery and expand Pluriomics service portfolio. This cooperation will give Pluriomics access to ACEA xCELLigence^® Real-Time Cell Analysis (RTCA) CardioECR instrument which enables them to simultaneously assess cardiomyocyte contractility, viability, and electrophysiology.

Pluriomics, a leading expert in human cardiovascular stem cell technology, disease modeling and cell-based assay products and services for cardiovascular drug discovery; and ACEA Biosceinces, a pioneer of impedance-based, label-free, real-time cell analysis instrumentation announced a cooperation to advance cardiac drug discovery.

Pluriomics developed and commercializes its proprietary and fully functional human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (Pluricyte^® Cardiomyocytes), which exhibiting unique electrophysiological characteristics that make them exceptionally well-suited for efficient data analysis and interpretation of studies performed with Multi Electrode Array and with the ACEA xCELLigence Real-Time Cell Analysis (RTCA) CardioECR instrument (CardioECR) in particular. Indeed, among their unique characteristics, Pluricyte Cardiomyocytes present well-pronounced depolarization and repolarization peaks allowing an easy detection of electrophysiological parameters (e.g. depolarization/repolarization peak amplitudes, beat rate, field potential duration) that make them very attractive for their use in combination with the CardioECR. Pluriomics uses the CardioECR for Pluricyte® Cardiomyocytes extensive quality controls but also added it to its portfolio of services for cardiac safety assessment and cardiac drug discovery.

The Pluriomics/ACEA cooperation is the result of several years of fruitful collaboration between the two companies. Since Pluriomics acquired a CardioECR in 2015, they have developed various applications implementing its Pluricyte Cardiomyocytes in different assays using this system. The CardioECR combines high frequency measurement of cell-induced electrical impedance with multielectrode array technology to simultaneously assess cardiomyocyte contractility, viability, and electrophysiology. It presents various distinctive characteristics particularly attractive for cardiac drug discovery and functional screening: an enhanced impedance data acquisition rate (every 1 millisecond), a separate pair of electrodes to measure field potential at 10 kHz, a pacing stimulus, and an electronic 48-well microtiter plate (E-Plate^® CardioECR 48).

Thanks to this cooperation, Pluriomics will support ACEA in the promotion of the CardioECR using it for commercial projects, and anticipate that the closer relationship will further serve Pluriomics goal of becoming the first choice in the industry for drug discovery solutions in the cardiomyocyte space.

Celine Hechard, VP Business Development and Marketing of Pluriomics, commented,“We are very happy to develop a more close relationship with ACEA and to leverage our expertise with the CardioECR system and use it more extensively. Our Pluricyte® Cardiomyocytes are definitively a great addition to this system thank to their unique electrophysiological characteristics.”

Yama Abassi, VP Global Strategic Business Development and Growth of ACEA Biosciences, added, “We are pleased to cooperate with Pluriomics and to further promote the advantages of our CardioECR instrument that provides a view of cardiomyocyte health at an unprecedented level of detail, enabling a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying drug-induced cardiac liability.”