Cardiac Safety Screening
Gwathmey Preclinical Testing Services, Inc. provides cardiovascular studies to monitor in vivo heart functions using echocardiography, telemetry, and pressure/volume relationships as well as non-invasive blood pressure and temperature measurements. Gwathmey, Inc. also offers unique animal models of cardiovascular disease enabling compounds to be tested for their effects on heart contractility.
Services Offered
Our cardiovascular services include:
Non-Invasive Studies in Small Animals
• Myocardial Contractility and Heart Function by Echocardiography
• Blood Pressure and Temperature Measurements
Invasive Studies in Small Animals
• Transmitter, pumps and radio telemetry
• Millar Pressure-Volume relationship
• Surgical Models
• Langendorff Heart Model
Details of Services
Non-Invasive Studies in Small Animals
• Myocardial Contractility and Heart Function by Echocardiography
We use echocardiography for measuring myocardial contractility, wall motion, wall thickness, and left ventricular blood volume in small animals. We offer echocardiograms of the left and right ventricle, M-mode and two-dimensional echocardiograms.
• Blood Pressure and Temperature Measurements
We offer non-invasive blood pressure measurements using a tailcuff acquisition system by volume pressure recording technology (VPR). Our services include measurements of systolic pressure, diastolic pressure, mean pressure, heart pulse rate, blood volume, blood flow and body temperature.
Invasive Studies in Small Animals
• Transmitter, Pumps and Radio Telemetry
Gwathmey Preclinical Testing Services, Inc. provides minimitter and transmitter implants for telemetry and physiological measurements. ECGs, blood pressures and body temperatures are electronically recorded into a computerized system while allowing animals to remain unrestrained in their cages.
• Millar Pressure-Volume Relationship
Gwathmey Preclinical Testing Services, Inc. uses Millar Pressure-Volume Systems (MPVS). These systems consist of instrumentation and P-V catheters for computerized data acquisition and analysis for real-time complete cardiovascular assessment in mice and rats.
• Surgical Models
We create homogeneous and reproducible surgical animal models of cardiovascular disease including myocardial infarction, aortic banding, and reperfusion studies. We perform pressure overload and drug infusions for the study of ventricular hypertrophy and heart failure. In addition, we specialize in homogeneous gene delivery in cardiac tissue for the study of gene function-relationships in phenotyping of cardiovascular disease.
• Langendorff Heart Model
Gwathmey Preclinical Testing Services Inc. offers cardiovascular screening models for cardiotoxicity using the Langendorff heart model. We provide efficient, fast, and economical drug characterization and cardiotoxicity testing using the Langendorff heart model. Drugs are evaluated using rat-isolated hearts. The electrophysiology parameters (ECG), and contractility parameters are obtained during iso-volumetric contractions while coronary perfusion pressure is kept constant. We also offer arrhythmogenicity assessment using the Langendorff perfusion preparations.
