Human pluripotent stem cell-based cardiovascular disease modeling and drug discovery

Heart diseases are prevalent worldwide and account for the highest mortality than any other illness. Although investment in drug discovery and development has increased, the amount of drug approvals has seen a progressive decline. Moreover, adverse side effects to the heart have become the most common reasons for preclinical project cessation, partly due to the lack of suitable humanized preclinical models. Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have emerged as a powerful non-animal platform to model heart disease, to screen for novel drugs, and to test drug cardiotoxicity in a high-throughput and cost-effective manner. Here, we review and discuss recent breakthroughs in the development of cardiovascular modeling and their current and future applications of hPSC-based drug discovery and testing.