2023 Research Projects
Learning from Nature: Mechanics of Mimosa Pudica and its Enlightenment in Vascular Scaffold Designing
Principal Investigator: Arvind Agarwal
Mentor: Lihua Lou
Project Description: Mimosa Pudica is a legume family plant with hypersensitive leaves that could fold inward in response to external force, which is called seismonastic movement for defense or nutrient maintenance. Its force-sensitive mechanism is due to curved structure and electrical-chemical signaling. Enlightened by this automatic shrinkage and expansion function, researchers are working on designing 3D shape memory materials as vessel scaffolds and microelectromechanical bioelectronics due to their adaptable stiffness/flexibility to accommodate body movements and high durability and resistance to fatigues. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of the force mechanism to trigger seismonastic movement of Mimosa Pudica and its potential applications in cardiac bioengineering. Therefore, we aim to explore the mechanical response of Mimosa Pudica and its potential benefit for CELL-MET in manufacturing implantable and vascularized cardiac patches.
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Biomanufacturing Stem-cell Derived Cardiac Grafts with Micro-scale Vasculature
Principal Investigator: Brendon Baker
Mentor: Maggie Jewett
Project Description: Acute or chronic cardiac injuries, eg. through myocardial infarction or prolonged cardiac overload, cause irreversible damage to the heart. The field of cardiac tissue engineering aims to develop technologies to biomanufacture engineered tissues that could replace injured or diseased native myocardium and restore normal cardiac function for the patient. The goal of this project is to engineer hydrogel-based 3D tissue grafts containing dense and organized beds of capillaries interspersed between aligned bundles of cardiomyocytes. Students contributing to this project will develop expertise tissue engineering and biomaterials development, in particular melt electro-writing and tissue microfabrication.
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Making Heart Tissue Dance
Principal Investigator: Thomas Bifano
Mentor: Ruifeng Hu
Project Description: In our lab, we exercise engineered heart tissue to try to help it mature. Using tiny exercise machines that we control with precision actuators, we measure and control forces exerted by these small tissue bundles, which are comprised of a few thousand cardiomyocytes grown from stem cells. To further stimulate the tissues during exercise, we provide them with low voltage electrical pulses that cause them to beat like miniature hearts. This project will involve building a second-generation apparatus that can deliver the programmed electrical pulses to the tissues.
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Wide-and Zero-bandgap Two-dimensional Devices for Liquid Sensing Applications
Principal Investigator: David Bishop
Mentor: Nicholas E. Fuhr
Project Description: Two-dimensional materials are atomically thin and readily couple to liquids at a phase interface resulting in perturbation of electrical transport. Monolayer graphene, a semimetal, can form heterostructures via van der Waals intermolecular forces with other two-dimensional materials like hexagonal boron nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor. Recently, both monolayer graphene and hexagonal boron nitride have reached wafer-scale commercialization, affording an opportunity to increase throughput for characterization of two-dimensional heterostructures for biosensing applications. Contemporary diagnostics rely on expensive, time-consuming, optically-limited mechanisms that obstructs complete access to biomolecular profiles. Two-dimensional heterostructures may unlock the information needed to profile physiology and disease beyond current state-of-the-art technology.
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Engineering Vascular Beds that Connect to Ex Vivo Tissue
Principal Investigator: Chris Chen
Mentor: Terry Ching
Project Description: Following a myocardial infarction, the necrotic tissue in the infarction zone is replaced by a fibrotic scar. Even though this scar tissue helps hold the heart together and maintain its structure, it does not contribute to the heart’s function and can impair its ability to contract and relax properly. One of the main goals of Cell-MET is to engineer a vascularized cardiac patch that can be grafted onto scar tissue to assist the heart with its pumping action. To better study vascular engraftment, we are currently developing a vascular-engraftment-on-chip model that is composed of a microfluidic device with an engineered vascular bed and a living tissue explant. The REU will help with the design and manufacturing of diverse prototypes of the microfluidic chip and conduct ex vivo engraftment experiments with engineered vasculature.
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Understanding the Variations in Microtissue Deformations and their Relation with iPSC-CMs Maturity
Principal Investigator: David Nordsletten
Mentor: Javiera Jilberto Vallejos
Project Description: The mechanical environment where cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC-CMs) develop has shown to be an important factor in the degree of function that engineered heart tissues (EHTs) achieve. This project aims to use digital image correlation tools to analyze videos of contractile cardiac microtissues that were grown under different mechanical environments. This will provide essential information that can be used to understand how local deformations are related to experimental observations and as input for computational models that can be used to study tissue mechanics further.