Risk Assessment in Acquired Long QT Syndrome: The Devil Is in the Details.

Acquired long QT syndrome, mostly as a result of drug block of the Kv11. 1 potassium channel in the heart, is characterized by delayed cardiac myocyte repolarization, prolongation of the T interval on the ECG, syncope and sudden cardiac death due to the polymorphic ventricular arrhythmia Torsade de Pointes (TdP). In recent years, efforts are underway through the Comprehensive proarrhythmic assay (CiPA) initiative, to develop better tests for this drug induced arrhythmia based in part on simulations of pharmacological disruption of repolarization. However, drug binding to Kv11.1 is more complex than a simple binary molecular reaction, meaning simple steady state measures of potency are poor surrogates for risk. As a result, there is a plethora of mechanistic detail describing the drug/Kv11.1 interaction-such as drug binding kinetics, state preference, temperature dependence and trapping-that needs to be considered when developing models for risk prediction. In addition to this, other factors, such as multichannel pharmacological profile and the nature of the ventricular cell models used in simulations also need to be considered in the search for the optimum approach. Here we consider how much of mechanistic detail needs to be included for models to accurately predict risk and further, how much of this detail can be retrieved from protocols that are practical to implement in high throughout screens as part of next generation of preclinical drug screening approaches?