Liudmila Polonchuk

Roche · Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED)

Background L-type calcium channels (LCCs) are multi-protein macro-molecular ion channel complexes that are involved in several critical functions in cardiac, skeletal, neuronal, smooth muscle, and endocrine cells. Like other ion channels, LCCs can be selectively over-expressed in a host cell line and studied using voltage-clamp patch-clamp experime...

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), as a novel immunotherapy, are designed to modulate the immune system to attack malignancies. Despite their promising benefits, immune-related adverse events (IRAEs) may occur, and incidences are bound to increase with surging demand of this class of drugs in treating cancer. Myocarditis, although rare compared t...

The L‐type calcium current () plays a critical role in cardiac electrophysiology, and models of are vital tools to predict arrhythmogenicity of drugs and mutations. Five decades of measuring and modeling have resulted in several competing theories (encoded in mathematical equations). However, the introduction of new models has not typically been ac...

Computational models of the electrical potential across a cell membrane are longstanding and vital tools in electrophysiology research and applications. These models describe how ionic currents, internal fluxes, and buffering interact to determine membrane voltage and form action potentials (APs). Although this relationship is usually expressed as...

Autoimmune myocarditis is a rare, but frequently fatal, side effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), a class of cancer therapies. Despite extensive experimental work on the causes, development and progression of this disease, much still remains unknown about the importance of the different immunological pathways involved. We present a mathem...

Autoimmune myocarditis is a rare, but frequently fatal, side effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), a class of cancer therapies. Despite extensive experimental work on the causes, development and progression of this disease, much still remains unknown about the importance of the different immunological pathways involved. We present a mathem...

In the last decade, 3D bioprinting technology has emerged as an innovative tissue engineering approach for regenerative medicine and drug development. This article aims at providing an overview about the most commonly used bioengineered tissues, focusing on 3D bioprinted cardiac cells and how they have been utilized for drug discovery and developme...

Currentin vivoandin vitromodels fail to accurately recapitulate the human heart microenvironment for biomedical applications. This study explores the use of cardiac spheroids (CSs) to biofabricate novel and advanced physiological cardiac models forin vitrotesting. CSs were created from human cardiac myocytes, fibroblasts and endothelial cells, mixe...

Many small molecule kinase inhibitors (SMKIs) used to fight cancer have been associated with cardiotoxicity in the clinic. Therefore, preventing their failure in clinical development is a priority for preclinical discovery. Our study focused on the integration and concurrent measurement of ATP, apoptosis dynamics and functional cardiac indexes in h...

Autoimmune myocarditis is a rare, but frequently fatal, side-effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), a class of drugs used to treat cancer. Due to the overwhelming complexity of the immune system, this condition is not well understood, despite the significant research efforts devoted to it. To better understand ICI-induced autoimmune myocard...

There is an increasing expectation that computational approaches may supplement existing human decision-making. Frontloading of models for cardiac safety prediction is no exception to this trend, and ongoing regulatory initiatives propose use of high-throughput in vitro data combined with computational models for calculating proarrhythmic risk. Eva...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Automated patch clamp (APC) instruments enable efficient evaluation of electrophysiologic effects of drugs on human cardiac currents in heterologous expression systems. Differences in experimental protocols, instruments, and dissimilar site procedures affect the variability of IC50 values characterizing drug block potency. This impacts the utility...

Introduction hERG block potency is widely used to calculate a drug's safety margin against its torsadogenic potential. Previous studies are confounded by use of different patch clamp electrophysiology protocols and a lack of statistical quantification of experimental variability. Since the new cardiac safety paradigm being discussed by the Internat...

This white paper presents principles for validating proarrhythmia risk prediction models for regulatory use as discussed at the In Silico Breakout Session of a Cardiac Safety Research Consortium/Health and Environmental Sciences Institute/US Food and Drug Administration–sponsored Think Tank Meeting on May 22, 2018. The meeting was convened to evalu...

Predicting how pharmaceuticals may affect heart rhythm is a crucial step in drug development and requires a deep understanding of a compound’s action on ion channels. In vitro hERG channel current recordings are an important step in evaluating the proarrhythmic potential of small molecules and are now routinely performed using automated high-throug...

Ion channel behavior can depend strongly on temperature, with faster kinetics at physiological temperatures leading to considerable changes in currents relative to room temperature. These temperature-dependent changes in voltage-dependent ion channel kinetics (rates of opening, closing, inactivating, and recovery) are commonly represented with Q10...

Ion channel behaviour can depend strongly on temperature, with faster kinetics at physiological temperatures leading to considerable changes in currents relative to room temperature. These temperature-dependent changes in voltage-dependent ion channel kinetics (rates of opening, closing and inactivating) are commonly represented with Q 10 coefficie...

Predicting how pharmaceuticals may affect heart rhythm is a crucial step in drug-development, and requires a deep understanding of a compound’s action on ion channels. In vitro hERG-channel current recordings are an important step in evaluating the pro-arrhythmic potential of small molecules, and are now routinely performed using automated high-thr...

The CaV1.2 channel (conducting the L-type Calcium current, ICaL) plays an important role in cardiac excitation and contraction. For an integrative assessment of drug-induced cardiac risk, it is important to understand a drug’s effect on CaV1.2 kinetics and conductance, and its impact on the downstream cellular signals and processes (e.g. cardiac ac...

Human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) have applications in disease modelling, cell therapy, drug screening and testing of personalised treatments. The current regulatory initiatives on cardiac safety (CiPA, JiSCA) encourage the adoption of a new approach which involves extensive use of in silico models of human cardi...

Our laboratory has recently developed a novel three-dimensional in vitro model of the human heart, which we call the vascularized cardiac spheroid (VCS). These better recapitulate the human heart’s cellular and extracellular microenvironment compared to the existing in vitro models. To achieve this, human-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derive...

Introduction: Since 2005 the S7B and E14 guidances from ICH and FDA have been in place to assess a potential drug candidate's ability to cause long QT syndrome. To refine these guidelines, the FDA proposed the Comprehensive in vitro Proarrhythmia Assay (CiPA) initiative, where the assessment of drug effects on cardiac repolarization was one subjec...

Human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) have applications in disease modeling, cell therapy, drug screening and personalized medicine. Computational models can be used to interpret experimental findings in iPSC-CMs, provide mechanistic insights, and translate these findings to adult cardiomyocyte (CM) electrophysiology...

Three-dimensional in vitro cell systems are a promising alternative to animals to study cardiac biology and disease. We have generated three-dimensional in vitro models of the human heart (“cardiac spheroids”, CSs) by co-culturing human primary or iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and fibroblasts at ratios approximating those present i...

Rationale: Impaired maturation of human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) currently limits their use in experimental research and further optimization is required to unlock their full potential. Objective: To push hiPSC-CMs towards maturation, we recapitulated the intrinsic cardiac properties by electro-mechanical stimulation and explored...

Background Nitric oxide (NO●) and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) play a dual role in the human heart by both preventing and mediating the toxic effects of chemotherapeutics such as doxorubicin (DOX). Treatment of cancer patients with DOX can result in severe late-onset dilated cardiomyopathy more than one year after completion of treatmen...

There are many sources of uncertainty in the recording and modelling of membrane action potentials (APs) from cardiomyocytes. For example, there are measurement, parameter, and model uncertainties. There is also extrinsic variability between cells, and intrinsic beat-to-beat variability within a single cell. These combined uncertainties and variabi...

While current S7B/E14 guidelines have succeeded in protecting patients from QT-prolonging drugs, the absence of a predictive paradigm identifying pro-arrhythmic risks has limited the development of valuable drug programs. We investigated if a human ex-vivo action potential (AP)-based model could provide a more predictive approach for assessing pro-...

While current S7B/E14 guidelines have succeeded in protecting patients from QT-prolonging drugs, the absence of a predictive paradigm identifying pro-arrhythmic risks has limited the development of valuable drug programs. We investigated if a human ex-vivo action potential (AP)-based model could provide a more predictive approach for assessing pro-...

Drug-induced pro-arrhythmic risk has been one of the main causes for drug candidate failure and has even led to compound withdrawn from the market. A new cardiac safety paradigm that combines in-vitro screening of multiple ion channels and in-silico tools, particularly biophysically-detailed cardiac electrophysiology models, has been encouraged by...

The recent progress in biosensor technology combined with availability of human stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (SC-CMs) provides an exciting possibility to assess novel biomarkers of cardiac function in vitro. CardioExcyte 96 (Nanion Technologies GmbH, Germany) is a new screening platform combining impedance and extracellular field potential (EFP...

On the tenth anniversary of two key International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) guidelines relating to cardiac proarrhythmic safety, an initiative aims to consider the implementation of a new paradigm that combines in vitro and in silico technologies to improve risk assessment. The Comprehensive In Vitro Proarrhythmia Assay (CiPA) initiative (c...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious public health burden and a leading cause of disability. Its pharmacotherapy is currently limited to modulators of monoamine neurotransmitters and second-generation antipsychotics. Recently, glutamatergic approaches for the treatment of MDD have increasingly received attention, and preclinical research su...

Patch-clamping is a powerful technique for investigating the ion channel function and regulation. However, its low throughput hampered profiling of large compound series in early drug development. Fortunately, automation has revolutionized the area of experimental electrophysiology over the past decade. Whereas the first automated patch-clamp instr...

Inhibition of spleen tyrosine kinase has attracted much attention as a mechanism for the treatment of cancers and autoimmune diseases such as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and SLE. We report the structure-guided optimization of pyridazine amide spleen tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Early representatives of this scaffold were highly potent and selectiv...

The Patchliner® temperature-controlled automated patch clamp system was evaluated for testing drug effects on potassium currents through human ether-à-go-go related gene (hERG) channels expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells at 35–37°C. IC50 values for a set of reference drugs were compared with those obtained using the conventional voltage clamp...

Pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationships are crucial in understanding a drug's arrhythmogenic potential. Models assist to quantitatively relate parent and metabolite concentrations to adverse electrocardiographic effects, including an apparent delay between effect and circulating parent species concentration. Here, we used an effect compartmen...

SAR studies of a recently described SST5R selective benzoxazole piperidine lead series are described with particular focus on the substitution pattern on the benzyl and benzoxazole side-chains. Introduction of a second meta substituent at the benzyl unit significantly lowers residual hH1 activity and insertion of substituents onto the benzoxazole p...

Biological therapeutic agents (biologicals), such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), are increasingly important in the treatment of human disease, and many types of biologicals are in clinical development. During preclinical drug development, cardiovascular safety pharmacology studies are performed to assess cardiac safety in accord with the ICH S7A...

Der Oxetanring ist ein wenig beachteter Heterocyclus in der medizinischen Chemie. In ihrer Zuschrift auf S. 7900 ff. zeigen M. Rogers‐Evans, E. M. Carreira et al., dass dieses Strukturmotiv wichtige physiko‐ und pharmakochemische Eigenschaften eines zugrunde liegenden Gerüstes verbessern kann. In einer Serie lipophiler tertiärer Aminderivate wurde...

The oxetane ring is an orphan heterocycle in medicinal chemistry. In their Communication on page 7736 ff., M. Rogers‐Evans, E. M. Carreira, and co‐workers show that this structural motif can improve key physico‐ and pharmacochemical properties of an underlying scaffold. An “oxetane scan” within a series of lipophilic tertiary amine derivatives was...

(Chemical Equation Presented) Ring the changes: Introduction of an oxetane ring results in remarkably improved physico- and biochemical properties of the underlying scaffold. The oxetane ring confers enhanced solubility, reduces the metabolic degredation, lipophilicity, and amphiphilicity, and modulates the basicity of a nearby amine group.

Gap junction channels are essential for intercellular communication. Among the most abundant gap junction channel proteins is connexin 43 (Cx43). The goal of our study was to find out, whether Cx43 content may be regulated via adenylyl cyclase (AC)/cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA), protein kinase C (PKC) pathways or by a tyrosine kinase coupled pathway,...

Gap junction channels provide the basis for the electrical syncytial properties of the heart as a communicating electrical network. Cardiac gap junction channels are predominantly composed of connexin 40 or connexin 43. The conductance of these channels (g(j)) can be regulated pharmacologically: substances which activate protein kinase C, protein k...

Antiarrhythmic peptides enhance gap junction current in pairs of cardiomyocytes and coupling in cardiac tissue. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, we investigated the effects of the antiarrhythmic peptide AAP10 (GAG-4Hyp-PY-CONH2) on pairs of adult guinea pig ventricular cardiomyocytes and pairs of HeLa cells transfected with rat cardiac conne...

Gap junctions were assayed during re-differentiation of adult rat cardiomyocytes in long-term culture to gain insight into the processes of remodeling. Double immunostaining allowed the localization of connexins Cx40, Cx43, and Cx45 between myocytes and demonstrated co-expression and co-localization in individual cells and gap junction plaques, res...

OBJECTIVES To elucidate the structural basis for the electrophysiologic remodeling induced by chronic atrial fibrillation (AF), we investigated connexin40 and connexin43 (Cx40 and Cx43) expression and distribution in atria of patients with and without chronic AF and in an animal model of AF with additional electrophysiologic investigation of anisot...

We investigated the effects of the antiarrhythmic peptide AAP10 (GAG-4Hyp-PY-CONH2, 50 nM) on pairs of adult guinea pig cardiomyocytes and on pairs of HeLa-cells transfected with rat connexin43 (Cx43). Using double cell voltage clamp technique in cardiomyocytes under control conditions, gap junction conductance (Gj) steadily decreased (by -0.3 to -...

A new approach, the cultivation of heart muscle cells on biocompatible scaffolds made from titanium dioxide ceramics was established to provide a mechanism for in vitro engineering of a vital heart tissue. Terminally differentiated ventricular myocytes isolated from hearts of adult rats were kept in primary culture for long periods of time and used...

Arachidonic acid (AA) is known to inhibit intercellular conductance in normal and tumour cells. We showed that junctional conductance (Gj) in isolated murine hepatocytes was relatively tolerant to the uncoupling effect of AA. Extracellular application of 100 microM AA decreased Gj in less than 50% of hepatocytes, and the effect was much slower in o...