Cardiac Cell Engraftment in a Cardiac Slice Culture System

Project Description

A myocardial infarction (MI) occurs when blood flow to a region of heart muscle is interrupted, depriving cardiomyocytes of oxygen, leading to cell death and thus a loss of contraction in the area. The damaged muscle is replaced by a dense collagenous scar often leading to adverse remodeling and ultimately heart failure. 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 recover some of the lost function. To ensure successful engraftment of the cardiac patch, the engrafted cells need to integrate with the host tissue in a way that benefits cardiac function. However, knowledge about this biological integration is lacking.

To study cardiac muscle cell engraftment, the Chen lab is currently adapting a cardiac slice culture system to study how engrafted cells biologically interact with host tissue, with the aim of optimizing graft-host integration. Together with Xining Gao, a graduate student, and Claudia Varela, a postdoctoral researcher in the Chen lab, the REU student will help with the initial set-up of such a platform by aiding with the development and characterization of this ex vivo culture system.

Mentors

Christopher Chen, PI    Xining Gao Claudia Varela

Christopher Chen , Xining Gao, and Claudia Varela

• Perform experiments with cardiac slice culture system: The REU student will learn cardiac slice preparation and help develop methodology to promote long term culture
• Characterizing cardiac slices: The REU student will visualize and quantitatively evaluate obtained cardiac slices for structure and function
• Gain technical expertise in cardiac slice preparation and cardiac biology.
• Wet lab skills such as general cell culture, differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells into cardiomyocytes, immunofluorescence staining and imaging, as well as performance of cardiac slice culture system.
• Gain experience in experimental design and data analysis.

Timeline