Population-based mechanistic modeling allows for quantitative predictions of drug responses across cell types

Quantitative mismatches between human physiology and experimental models can be problematic for the development of effective therapeutics. When the effects of drugs on human adult cardiac electrophysiology are of interest, phenotypic differences with animal cells, and more recently stem cell-derived models, can present serious limitations. We addressed this issue through a combination of mechanistic mathematical modeling and statistical analyses. Physiological metrics were simulated in heterogeneous populations of models describing cardiac myocytes from adult ventricles and those derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC-CMs). These simulated measures were used to construct a cross-cell type regression model that predicts adult myocyte drug responses from iPSC-CM behaviors. We found that (1) quantitatively accurate predictions of responses to selective or non-selective ion channel blocking drugs could be generated based on iPSC-CM responses under multiple experimental conditions; (2) altering extracellular ion concentrations is an effective experimental perturbation for improving the model’s predictive strength; (3) the method can be extended to predict and contrast drug responses in diseased as well as healthy cells, indicating a broader application of the concept. This cross-cell type model can be of great value in drug development, and the approach, which can be applied to other fields, represents an important strategy for overcoming experimental model limitations.