By Diagnostics World Staff
October 25, 2017 | Dassault Systèmes’s Living Heart Project is now available on the cloud. The Living Heart Project is the winner of the 2016 Bio-IT World Best of Show award in the In Silico Futures category.
The Living Heart Model contains well-defined anatomic details including internal structures (e.g., heart valves, chordae tendineae, coronary arteries and veins) and proximal vasculature (e.g., aortic arch, pulmonary trunk, and SVC). Muscle fiber orientations, which vary across the surface and thickness of the heart are included, as are anatomically accurate representations of special cardiac electrical channels (bundle of His and Purkinje network).
For the first time, the company has announced, the Living Heart was used to simulate detailed drug interactions affecting the entire organ function. Researchers at Stanford University working with UberCloud recently used the Living Heart as a platform for a model that would enable pharmaceutical companies to test drugs for the risk of inducing cardiac arrhythmias, the leading negative side effect preventing FDA approval.
The Living Heart is now also available through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, offering the speed and flexibility of high-performance computing to even the smallest medical device companies. Any life sciences company can immediately access a complete, on-demand HPC environment to scale up virtual testing securely and collaboratively while managing infrastructure costs. This also crosses an important boundary toward the use of the Living Heart directly in a clinical setting, the company believes.
Modeling and simulation efforts have regulatory support. In a July blog post, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb publicly outlined FDA’s plan to help consumers capitalize on advances in science stating, “Modeling and simulation plays a critical role in organizing diverse data sets and exploring alternate study designs. This enables safe and effective new therapeutics to advance more efficiently through the different stages of clinical trials.” Dassault Systèmes signed an agreement with FDA in 2014, to use the Living Heart Model to improve heart disease treatment and care.
“The Living Heart Project is a strategic part of a broader effort by Dassault Systèmes to leverage its advanced simulation applications to push the boundaries of science,” said Jean Colombel, Vice President Life Sciences, Dassault Systèmes. “By creating both a community and a transformational platform we are beginning to see the advances from the Living Heart Project being used for additional aspects of cardiovascular research as well as for other parts of the body, for example the brain, the spine, the foot, and the eye, to reach new frontiers in patient care.”
The Living Heart Project has grown to more than 95 member organizations worldwide including medical researchers, practitioners, device manufacturers and regulatory agencies united in a mission of open innovation to solve healthcare challenges. The project has supported 15 research grant proposals by providing access to the model, associated technologies and project expertise. Novel use of the model to understand heart disease and study the safety and effectiveness of medical devices has appeared in eight articles published in peer-reviewed journals to date.