MechE PhD Prospectus Defense: Francisco Sanchez

TITLE: DEVELOPMENT OF A HIGH THROUGHPUT ELECTRICAL STIMULATION SCREENING PLATFORM FOR CARDIAC MICROPHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT: Engineered heart tissues (EHTs) have become indispensable for disease modeling and drug screening in both the private sector and regulatory agencies. Wide adoption of this platform has accelerated the demand for higher throughput pipelines that meet the collection efficiency required to be of value to both industries. Innovative advancements in that direction were made by Dr. Marshall Ma, with the development of an imaging system that enables the simultaneous collection of contractile information in a 96 well plate format. While extremely well received by practitioners at the FDA, two major limitations were identified in the system when considering its use in cardiotoxicity screening. The lack of an electrophysiological assay limiting the platforms characterization capabilities, and the absence of a compatible electrical stimulation system required for many of the industry standard protocols. To address these limitations, we proposed the implementation of multimodal imaging allowing for simultaneous collection of contractility and calcium handling information. In addition, we designed a custom electrical stimulation subsystem that allows the simultaneous pacing of 96 EHTs without interfering with data collection.

COMMITTEE: ADVISOR/CHAIR Professor Thomas Bifano, ME/MSE/BME/ECE; Professor Christopher Chen, BME/MSE; Professor Emma Lejeune, ME