Functional Assessment and Extended Culture of Human Pediatric Cardiac Tissue Slices for Preclinical Testing

Passive culture of human pediatric congenital heart disease myocardial slices preserves pacing-evoked calcium transients for up to 178 days in atrial and 119 days in ventricular tissue.

• Why it matters: Living human myocardial slices retain native architecture, but pediatric physiology and prolonged preclinical functional testing have been constrained by limited culture duration and specimen size.
• What they did: Myocardial atrial and ventricular specimens from 41 congenital heart disease surgery patients (7.7±11.1 years; 1 day–49 years) were sectioned and assessed acutely or during free-floating rocking culture without stimulation, with calcium transients recorded during pacing and after isoproterenol or norepinephrine.
• The result: Viability was 85.8±5.6% post-slicing and 78.8±5.0% after 3–5 hours, calcium transient durations stayed relatively stable, and beta-adrenergic agonists shortened durations (isoproterenol: 32% atrial, 25% ventricular at 0.3 Hz) with drug responses persisting to ~120 days in atrial and ~60 days in ventricular slices.

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