Filipa Simões - Cardiac Sciences / Development & Cell Biology - 'A human vascularised cardiac organoid system for modelling cell-cell interactions and target discovery in heart disease'

A major obstacle to a deeper understanding of how the human heart responds to injury is the lack of human-derived in vitro 2D and 3D cell culture models that faithfully recapitulate the complexity of an in vivo system, where multiple resident and infiltrating cell populations co-exist and interact within the cardiac niche. Our group is working towards the development and application of self-organizing multi-lineage cardiac organoid structures to account for the complex 3D cell-cell interactions occurring between multiple cardiac cell types. We aim to facilitate translational research by enabling genetic screens and pharmacological modulation of disease states by further developing a human 3D vascularised cardiac organoid model that offers a chamber-specific, scalable and highly manipulable multi-lineage human cardiac model that reduces dependence on animal models.