The incidence of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is rising sharply due to the increased prevalence of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. In the coming years, the prevalence of HFpEF is increasing and is expected to exceed that of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. The pharmaceutical industry therefore needs robust preclinical models to develop effective and newly targeted therapies. 

A wide range of in vivo HFpEF models already exists and are based on single hit or multi-hits approaches thus placing them more or less in line with the multifactorial pathophysiology of this syndrome. Despite being highly informative during late stages of preclinical drug development, these in vivo models do not but do not allow high-throughput screening for the efficacy of new drugs, remain very costly and are subject to the challenge of inter-species differences. 

In this context, PhysioStim aimed to develop a robust and reproducible in vitro HFpEF model based on the monitoring of structural and functional parameters of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs), exposed to a cocktail of molecular agents known to be involved in the pathophysiology of HFpEF.