Langendorff Heart Studies
Cardiac safety assessment through isolated heart modeling
Langendorff heart studies are a cornerstone of ex vivo cardiovascular safety assessment, offering high-resolution insight into cardiac function, electrophysiology, and contractility. CorDynamics specializes in this technique to help sponsors detect and characterize cardiac liabilities early in the drug development process.
What is the Langendorff Heart Model?
The Langendorff heart model involves the ex vivo perfusion of an isolated heart—typically from a rat or guinea pig—through retrograde aortic cannulation. This setup enables precise control over perfusate composition, preload and afterload, pacing protocols, and temperature, allowing for high-fidelity measurement of cardiac performance in a controlled environment without systemic influences.
This technique is particularly valuable for early cardiac safety screening, as it isolates the heart’s direct response to a compound and eliminates confounding variables present in comparable in vivo systems.
Langendorff studies are frequently used to:
- Assess proarrhythmic risk through ECG interval analysis
- Detect direct myocardial effects such as altered inotropy or chronotropy
- Evaluate coronary flow responses under constant-pressure or constant-flow perfusion
- Characterize action potential changes and conduction delays via electrical pacing or pharmacologic challenge
The ability to dissect these cardiac responses in detail makes Langendorff an essential component of integrated cardiovascular safety pharmacology programs.
Why Choose CorDynamics
CorDynamics has performed hundreds of Langendorff studies in support of cardiovascular drug development and safety pharmacology. Our team brings decades of collective experience in executing and interpreting ex vivo heart data.
We maintain validated protocols for all provided models, and our laboratory is equipped with high-fidelity sensor technology, programmable stimulation, and temperature-controlled perfusion circuits.
We are a trusted partner to sponsors seeking precise, reproducible data for preclinical cardiac risk evaluation.
