The PARADISE consortium, a collaboration between Amsterdam UMC, LUMC, and WUR, led by assistant professor Dr. Bram Coolen, has been awarded a NWO Open Technology grant to develop an innovative platform that keeps mouse hearts fully functional ex vivo while enabling high-resolution MRI imaging. Traditional animal models for heart disease often lack the ability to precisely and longitudinally monitor the onset and progression of cardiac conditions under controlled circumstances. This new technology will allow researchers to study heart disease and treatment effects with unprecedented accuracy.

Revolutionizing cardiac disease research

The LUMC team has recently shown the ability to maintain mouse hearts in a fully functional state outside the body, enabling researchers to monitor cardiac function and structure under strictly controlled conditions. “By integrating this novel platform with our pre-clinical MRI system, we gain unprecedented opportunities to study disease processes and treatments in detail and as function of time,” explains Coolen. He and his team will demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by tracking heart function and structure after inducing cardiac fibrosis or valvular calcification in ex vivo cultured hearts. They will also investigate how different drug delivery methods affect the heart.

By keeping hearts fully functional outside the body, we gain unprecedented opportunities using non-invasive MR imaging to study disease processes and treatment strategies in detail.
Bram Coolen
Assistant professor
National Collaboration and Infrastructure

Together with group leader prof. Strijkers, Coolen is also part of the AMICE consortium, which received the highly prestigious NWO Large Scale Research Infrastructure (LSRI) grant at the end of last year. This consortium aims to bring newly developed techniques to a nationwide preclinical infrastructure, giving researchers across the Netherlands access to advanced imaging technologies, promoting image re-use, and increasing scientific efficiency. "Thanks to the collaboration within the AMICE consortium, we can make this technology widely available to researchers across the Netherlands, which will significantly accelerate progress in cardiac research," says Coolen.

    NWO Open Technology Programme

    The Open Technology Programme provides funding for application-oriented technical-scientific research that is free and unrestricted and not hindered by disciplinary boundaries. Read more about the programme here.

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