Press release

ACEA Biosciences – A Part of Agilent Launches the xCELLigence RTCA ePacer to improve the Quality and Functionality of hiPSC-Cardiomyocytes for Drug Discovery, Safety Pharmacology, and Cardiac Disease Research

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On March 11, 2019, ACEA Biosciences – A Part of Agilent unveiled the new
xCELLigence® RTCA ePacerTM during their workshop held at the
Society of Toxicology (SOT) Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

Human induced pluripotent stem cell cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CM) are
increasingly being used as a human-relevant in vitro model system
for drug discovery, safety pharmacology, and cardiac disease research.
While these cells are “fit for purpose” for a number of applications,
their inherent immature phenotype has limited their applicability for
many in vitro studies.

“The challenge with hiPSC cardiomyocytes is that they are more like
neonatal cardiomyocytes rather than adult-like cardiomyocytes,” said
Yama Abassi, Ph.D., Vice President of ACEA Biosciences – A Part of
Agilent. It is imperative to improve the maturation status and
functionality of hiPSC-CM in order to obtain a more relevant and
predictive model system that can be used for downstream applications.
While there are a number of techniques being investigated, prolonged
electrical pacing has been shown to be an efficient and reliable way to
enable functional maturation of hiPSC-CM. The xCELLigence ePacer allows
for a scalable, efficient, and high throughput method for maturing
hiPSC-CM in vitro. Moreover, the specially designed
microelectronic plates (E-Plates) are compatible with other orthogonal
readouts such as calcium and high content imaging.

Built upon the same groundbreaking technology of the xCELLigence RTCA
Cardio and CardioECR systems, the xCELLigence RTCA ePacer uses
electrical stimuli to precisely stimulate and pace cardiomyocytes
cultured in E-Plates. With the pacing protocols on the ePacer,
researchers can produce functionally mature cardiomyocytes within 1-3
weeks, depending on the cardiomyocyte types and the pacing protocol
details. Importantly, after pacing is performed, the ePacer software is
able to generate metrics to verify the extent of maturity of the paced
cardiomyocytes. These functionally matured cardiomyocytes have much
improved responses to inotropic compounds and are more predictive of ion
channel modulators. In addition, a number of relevant ion channels,
structural proteins, and sarcomeric proteins are upregulated in these
paced and functionally mature cardiomyocytes.

The xCELLigence RTCA ePacer is designed to be part of an integral
workflow and to revolutionize the way scientists use hiPSC-CM for their
research. “By providing researchers access to cardiomyocytes with
characteristics that match more closely to human adult heart cells,”
says Dr. Abassi, “we believe that the ePacer will give them more
confidence in their assays.

About xCELLigence® Real Time Cell Analysis (RTCA)

ACEA’s xCELLigence RTCA instruments are being used in both academia and
industry for life science applications ranging from cancer
immunotherapy, bacterial biofilms, vaccine development and
cardiotoxicity testing. With the xCELLigence technology, scientists can
non-invasively monitor the behavior of cells by quantifying cell
proliferation, morphology change, and attachment quality in a
label-free, real-time manner.

About ACEA Biosciences, A Part of Agilent Technologies

ACEA Biosciences, a part of Agilent Technologies, is a pioneer in the
development and commercialization of high-performance cell analysis
platforms for life science research. ACEA’s xCELLigence® Real-Time Cell
Analysis instruments and NovoCyte® Quanteon flow cytometers are used in
pre-clinical drug discovery and development, toxicology, safety
pharmacology, and basic academic research. More than 3,000 instruments
have been placed globally, and have been used in more than 2,000
peer-reviewed publications. For more information visit: http://www.aceabio.com.
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About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is a global leader in life sciences,
diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. Based on more than 50 years
of insight and innovation, Agilent instruments, software, services,
solutions, and people provide trusted answers to customers’ most
challenging questions. The company generated revenues of $4.91 billion
in fiscal 2018 and employs 14,800 people worldwide. Information about
Agilent is available at http://www.agilent.com.
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