Neural network emulation of the human ventricular cardiomyocyte action potential for more efficient computations in pharmacological studies

Grandits, Thomas; Augustin, Christoph M; Haase, Gundolf; Jost, Norbert; Mirams, Gary R; Niederer, Steven A; Plank, Gernot; Varró, András; Virág, László; Jung, Alexander

Abstract

Computer models of the human ventricular cardiomyocyte action potential (AP) have reached a level of detail and maturity that has led to an increasing number of applications in the pharmaceutical sector. However, interfacing the models with experimental data can become a significant computational burden. To mitigate the computational burden, the present study introduces a neural network (NN) that emulates the AP for given maximum conductances of selected ion channels, pumps, and exchangers. Its applicability in pharmacological studies was tested on synthetic and experimental data. The NN emulator potentially enables massive speed-ups compared to regular simulations and the forward problem (find drugged AP for pharmacological parameters defined as scaling factors of control maximum conductances) on synthetic data could be solved with average root-mean-square errors (RMSE) of 0.47 mV in normal APs and of 14.5 mV in abnormal APs exhibiting early afterdepolarizations (72.5% of the emulated APs were alining with the abnormality, and the substantial majority of the remaining APs demonstrated pronounced proximity). This demonstrates not only very fast and mostly very accurate AP emulations but also the capability of accounting for discontinuities, a major advantage over existing emulation strategies. Furthermore, the inverse problem (find pharmacological parameters for control and drugged APs through optimization) on synthetic data could be solved with high accuracy shown by a maximum RMSE of 0.22 in the estimated pharmacological parameters. However, notable mismatches were observed between pharmacological parameters estimated from experimental data and distributions obtained from the Comprehensive in vitro Proarrhythmia Assay initiative. This reveals larger inaccuracies which can be attributed particularly to the fact that small tissue preparations were studied while the emulator was trained on single cardiomyocyte data. Overall, our study highlights the potential of NN emulators as powerful tool for an increased efficiency in future quantitative systems pharmacology studies.

Citation

Grandits, T., Augustin, C. M., Haase, G., Jost, N., Mirams, G. R., Niederer, S. A., …Jung, A. (2024). Neural network emulation of the human ventricular cardiomyocyte action potential for more efficient computations in pharmacological studies. eLife, 12, Article RP91911. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.91911.3

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 10, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Apr 10, 2024
• Publication Date: Apr 10, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 13, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 16, 2024
• Journal: eLife
• Electronic ISSN: 2050-084X
• Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Article Number: RP91911
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.91911.3
• Keywords: General Immunology and Microbiology; General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Medicine; General Neuroscience
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/33567247
• Publisher URL: https://elifesciences.org/articles/91911#sa0