Cardiac Drug Development: From Animal Models to Clinical Trials

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that the total number of arrhythmia-related mortalities is approx 500,000 of an estimated 2,000,000 US deaths per year, or nearly one-quarter of all cardiovascular-related deaths (1 ). The majority of such deaths, which have remained at a nearly constant ratio since the 1970s when cardiac drug development programs were formally being established within the pharmaceutical industry, are caused by ventricular fibrillation (VF; Fig. 1 ).