# Ethnically Diverse iPSC-Cardiomyocyte Panel for Pharmacogenomics and Drug Safety Testing

> **NIH NIH R44** · GREENSTONE BIOSCIENCES, INC. · 2023 · $1,294,681

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Cardiotoxicity is a leading cause of early and late-stage drug attrition during pharmaceutical development. The
FDA now mandates that all new drugs be tested for cardiotoxicity before entering clinical trials. However, there
needs to be a safety screening platform that can swiftly detect cardiotoxicity cost-effectively, even before
investing too much time and resource in a drug development pipeline. This is further complicated by genomic
susceptibility in the population and how they respond to drugs. A tool that can incorporate the influences of sex,
ethnicity, and genetic background can provide accurate data on the safety and efficacy of drugs and stratify
patient populations to identify responders versus non-responders. In this SBIR grant, we propose to mitigate this
issue by providing pharmacogenomics and precision medicine platforms using human induced pluripotent stem
cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs). Our product is a kit comprising 100 unique and ethnically diverse iPSC
lines with equal sex representation. We aim to develop and validate this tool as a surrogate in vitro model for
predicting drug toxicity in patient groups at high risk for drug-induced arrhythmia. The study will use the “cell
village” platform to co-culture 10 different patient-specific iPSC lines simultaneously. We will scale this up by
multiplexing data from 100 different donors to identify cell-type-specific expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL)
using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and whole genome sequencing (WGS). As a proof-of-principle,
we will also assess inter-individual and intra-individual variability in responses to the chemotherapeutic agent
doxorubicin. Finally, Greenstone Biosciences, Inc is a biotechnology company located at the Stanford Research
Park. Greenstone uses latest advances in clinical genomics, computational biology, and patient-specific iPSCs
to understand pharmacogenomics and to accelerate drug discovery.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10755624
- **Project number:** 1R44HL170756-01
- **Recipient organization:** GREENSTONE BIOSCIENCES, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Syed Mukhtar Ahmed
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $1,294,681
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2023-09-05 → 2025-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10755624

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10755624, Ethnically Diverse iPSC-Cardiomyocyte Panel for Pharmacogenomics and Drug Safety Testing (1R44HL170756-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10755624. Licensed CC0.

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