Deep learning detects cardiotoxicity in a high-content screen with induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes

Abstract

Drug-induced cardiotoxicity and hepatotoxicity are major causes of drug attrition. To decrease late-stage drug attrition, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries need to establish biologically relevant models that use phenotypic screening to detect drug-induced toxicity in vitro. In this study, we sought to rapidly detect patterns of cardiotoxicity using high-content image analysis with deep learning and induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs). We screened a library of 1280 bioactive compounds and identified those with potential cardiotoxic liabilities in iPSC-CMs using a single-parameter score based on deep learning. Compounds demonstrating cardiotoxicity in iPSC-CMs included DNA intercalators, ion channel blockers, epidermal growth factor receptor, cyclin-dependent kinase, and multi-kinase inhibitors. We also screened a diverse library of molecules with unknown targets and identified chemical frameworks that show cardiotoxic signal in iPSC-CMs. By using this screening approach during target discovery and lead optimization, we can de-risk early-stage drug discovery. We show that the broad applicability of combining deep learning with iPSC technology is an effective way to interrogate cellular phenotypes and identify drugs that may protect against diseased phenotypes and deleterious mutations.

Data availability

Our RNA-Seq data has been deposited on the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. GEO Submission (GSE172181):https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE172181

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Francis Grafton

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Francis Grafton, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  2. Jaclyn Ho

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Jaclyn Ho, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  3. Sara Ranjbarvaziri

    Pediatrics (Cardiology),, Stanford University, Palo Alto, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  4. Farshad Farshidfar

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Farshad Farshidfar, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  5. Anastasiia Budan

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Anastasiia Budan, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  6. Stephanie Steltzer

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Stephanie Steltzer, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  7. Mahnaz Maddah

    -, Dana Solutions, Palo Alto, United States
    Competing interests
    Mahnaz Maddah, is affiliated with Dana Solutions. The author has no other competing interests to declare..
  8. Kevin E Loewke

    -, Dana Solutions, Palo Alto, United States
    Competing interests
    Kevin E Loewke, is affiliated with Dana Solutions. The author has no other competing interests to declare..
  9. Kristina Green

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Kristina Green, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  10. Snahel Patel

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Snahel Patel, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  11. Tim Hoey

    Drug Discovery, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    Competing interests
    Tim Hoey, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
  12. Mohammad Ali Mandegar

    Tenaya Therapeutics, Tenaya Therapeutics, South San Francisco, United States
    For correspondence
    mandegar@tenayathera.com
    Competing interests
    Mohammad Ali Mandegar, is an employee of Tenaya Therapeutics and has stock holdings in the company..
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5323-7891

Funding

No external funding was received for this work

Copyright

© 2021, Grafton et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Francis Grafton
  2. Jaclyn Ho
  3. Sara Ranjbarvaziri
  4. Farshad Farshidfar
  5. Anastasiia Budan
  6. Stephanie Steltzer
  7. Mahnaz Maddah
  8. Kevin E Loewke
  9. Kristina Green
  10. Snahel Patel
  11. Tim Hoey
  12. Mohammad Ali Mandegar
(2021)
Deep learning detects cardiotoxicity in a high-content screen with induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes
eLife 10:e68714.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68714

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68714