Complex versus simple models: ion-channel cardiac toxicity prediction

PeerJ. 2018 Feb 5:6:e4352. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4352. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

There is growing interest in applying detailed mathematical models of the heart for ion-channel related cardiac toxicity prediction. However, a debate as to whether such complex models are required exists. Here an assessment in the predictive performance between two established large-scale biophysical cardiac models and a simple linear model Bnet was conducted. Three ion-channel data-sets were extracted from literature. Each compound was designated a cardiac risk category using two different classification schemes based on information within CredibleMeds. The predictive performance of each model within each data-set for each classification scheme was assessed via a leave-one-out cross validation. Overall the Bnet model performed equally as well as the leading cardiac models in two of the data-sets and outperformed both cardiac models on the latest. These results highlight the importance of benchmarking complex versus simple models but also encourage the development of simple models.

Keywords: Cardiac safety simulator; Cardiac toxicity; CiPA; Ion-channels; Mathematical models; Pharmacology.

Grants and funding

The author received no funding for this work.