The same technology used in COVID-19 vaccines holds promise as a new approach to liver disease treatment. Michele Dula Baum, Senior Writer/Project Manager, Strategic Communications, Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor, Health Sciences, reports in PittMed where the science is heading in this new therapy methodology.
Almost one third of babies born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or HLHS, die from heart failure before their first birthday. By uncovering cellular processes that drive heart failure in these young patients, a new study may hold the answers to identifying and treating those at highest risk of early death.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Peter Alexander, PhD, is the Assistant Director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery both within the University of Pittsburgh. His background includes research in developmental biology, mechanisms of teratology and reproductive toxicology, orthopaedic surgery, stem cell biology, and tissue engineering. Common themes that run through active areas of his research are the use of stem cells in tissue engineering either as a participant or mediator of regenerative processes, the development of in vitro and/or in vivo models with which to test specific cell and tissue interactions, developmental or pathogenic processes, and the use of bioreactors to recapitulate specific cell and tissue interactions to produce physiological systems that more faithfully report disease processes and therapeutic outcomes.
The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine welcomes new affiliated faculty member Ramakrishna Mukkamala, PhD.
The multidisciplinary team consisting of seven McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members from four University of Pittsburgh Schools:
Older adults experience declining mobility, which leads to diminished quality of life, high health care costs, and thus constitutes a major health care problem. It is unclear what factors lead to mobility decline, but energy production by the mitochondrion is thought to play a role. This longitudinal study co-lead by McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Sruti Shiva, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology & Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh, utilizes new methodology to measure systemic mitochondrial function in blood cells of older people over time, to understand the role of mitochondrial function in age-associated physical function decline.
Acute coronary syndromes and strokes together constitute a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and Europe, approximately 80% of which are caused by atherosclerotic plaque rupture. Validation of an innovative diagnostic ultrasound imaging technology that will allow for noninvasively detecting atherosclerotic plaques that have high chance of rupturing, which will result in heart attacks and strokes, is proposed.
At Harvard Medical School during her first postdoctoral position, Aditi Gurkar, PhD, and her team were testing a cancer drug in young mice. The treatment worked, effectively shrinking the tumors, but when the researchers repeated the experiments in older rodents, the drug was no longer effective.
It was a medical mystery: When University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists induced a particular genetic mutation in mouse eggs, the resulting embryos would all die in the womb within a week.
When her father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Samira Kiani, PhD, Associate Professor, Liver Research Center, Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, scoured available clinical trials for cutting edge gene and cell therapies but came away frustrated at the limitations posed by many of them as a result of their vulnerability to the body’s natural immune response to the therapies.
The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine welcomes new affiliated faculty member Jarrett Cain, DPM, MSc, FACFAS.
The experts at the UPMC Mercy Burn Center join the American Burn Association (ABA) in observing National Burn Awareness Week, Feb. 6-12. ABA’s theme this year is “Burning Issues in the Kitchen” as 47% of all home fires are caused by cooking mishaps. According to the American Red Cross, fires break out year-round, but the majority in the United States occur during winter — when conditions for battling them are likely to be at their worst.
Narrative heart disease is responsible for over 600,000 deaths annually, making it the number one killer of women and men in the United States. There are currently no small diameter vascular grafts that effectively treat this disease. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Jonathan Vande Geest, PhD, Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, is the principal investigator on a project that will use computational tools to fabricate a fully biodegradable small diameter vascular tissue engineered graft that is and remains compliance matched as it remodels in-vivo.
The first-ever, in-depth characterization of the body’s response to traumatic injury was published in Cell Reports Medicine by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine physician-scientists. The results of their multiomics analysis—which spanned thousands of circulating molecules—offers an opportunity to refine personalized approaches to trauma management in the most severely injured patients.
Pitt researchers have been awarded a portion of a $2.1 million grant for Pennsylvania universities from the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation. The foundation, established by chemical engineer and entrepreneur Charles E. Kaufman, supports fundamental scientific research in chemistry, biology, and physics at institutions throughout the commonwealth.
The secret to producing large batches of stem cells more efficiently may lie in the near-zero gravity conditions of space. Scientists at Cedars-Sinai have found that microgravity has the potential to contribute to life-saving advances on Earth by facilitating the rapid mass production of stem cells.
Extracellular vesicles, or exosomes as they are more commonly known, continue to be a curious research focus for the scientific community. Once assumed to be waste materials secreted by cells, exosomes have recently been identified as mail carriers, serving an essential role in cell-to-cell communication by acting as delivery vehicles between cells. New research from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and UPMC explores a new use case for exosomes: delivering growth factors like bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) for bone healing.
The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine has been one of the prolific research centers at the University of Pittsburgh over the past 25 years, particularly in terms of its impact from translating discoveries from the lab to the clinic/market.
Persistent coughing, frequent lung infections, fatigue – these are some of the most common symptoms of cystic fibrosis, a devastating genetic disorder without a cure that affects more than 70,000 people worldwide.
Recently published in the Journal of Cerebral Blood and Metabolism, the article entitled “Physical therapy exerts sub-additive and suppressive effects on intracerebral neural stem cell implantation in a rat model of stroke” investigates how physical therapy affects neural stem cells implanted into stroke damage. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members and collaborative authors on this work are Michel Modo, PhD, Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Pittsburgh, and Fabrisia Ambrosio, PhD, MPT, Director of Rehabilitation for UPMC International and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh.
When a child has cancer, their parents are rightfully focused on a cure. But that cure can come at a future cost: infertility.
Over $1.6 million has been received from the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) for the 5-year Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Training Program. This research training grant is focused on the next generation of academic cardiac and thoracic surgeons and will be led by the following team which includes four McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members:
LyGenesis is a clinical-stage biotechnology company whose cell therapies use patients’ lymph nodes as bioreactors to regrow functioning ectopic organs. LyGenesis’s lead allogeneic cell therapy program is currently in a Phase 2a clinical trial for patients with end stage liver disease. LyGenesis was built on nearly a decade of groundbreaking academic research by McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine faculty member Eric Lagasse, PharmD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh and LyGenesis Founder and Chief Scientific Officer.
With global rates of male infertility continuing to rise, a new study in spermatogonial stem cell research led by researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) provides hope for future clinical therapies. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members Kyle Orwig, PhD, Professor, OB/GYN and Reproductive Sciences, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, with secondary appointments in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Developmental Biology, and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the founding Director of the Fertility Preservation Program of UPMC and the UPMC Magee Center for Reproduction and Transplantation, and Gerald Schatten, PhD, Director of the Pittsburgh Development Center, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Cell Biology, Bioengineering and Director of the Division of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine, are collaborators on this work.
Most cells throughout the body can divide and multiply to replace old cells and repair damaged tissue, but in response to certain stresses, cells can lose their ability to proliferate. These so-called senescent cells accumulate with age and may contribute to cancer and age-related disorders, such as chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, frailty, and dementia, by pumping out signals that damage neighboring tissues.
Procirca is a clinical healthcare services business focused on cardiovascular surgery, clinical neurophysiology, perioperative blood management, and clinical engineering. For more than 25 years, Procirca has led the way in bringing state-of-the-art technologies and therapies to market. As a wholly owned subsidiary of UPMC, Procirca’s clients worldwide have access to world-class academic resources, clinical research capabilities, and physician domain experts. The experience gained from the breadth and depth of its client base enables Procirca to design custom solutions which yield clinical and economic benefits.
There is growing evidence that cellular senescence plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of chronic liver diseases. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Michael Oertel, PhD, Associate Professor of Pathology, Division of Experimental Pathology, Department of Pathology, and a member of the Liver Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh, is a co-principal investigator on a project that will dissect the role of the activin A/p15INK4b axis in inducing senescence and how it impacts chronic liver disease progression. Uncovering mechanism(s) and identifying essential mediators of hepatocyte senescence will provide fundamental new information for developing novel therapeutic strategies to halt progression of chronic liver diseases.
The lab of McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Samira Kiani, PhD, Associate Professor, Liver Research Center, Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, focuses on developing controllable genetic circuits by combining the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology with design principles of synthetic biology. She and her team seek to precisely control the location, the timing or logic of function of Cas9 and multiple gRNAs so that they can develop safer and more controllable gene therapy platforms or employ the tools for sophisticated reprograming of cellular function and fate.
The University of Pittsburgh Department of Pathology Research Seminar series will resume in September with the first seminar for the fall to be held Wednesday, September 15 @ noon.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member John Pacella, MD, Associate Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, an adjunct Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and an interventional cardiologist within the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute, and Xiaoning Jiang, PhD, Dean F. Duncan Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the North Carolina State University, Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, and Adjunct Professor of Neurology at Duke University, are co-investigators on a novel R33 award as part of the recently launched NHLBI Catalyze Program which aims at “facilitating the transition of basic science discoveries into viable diagnostic and therapeutic candidates cleared for human testing.”
The Vascular Bioengineering Lab (VBL) at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering—led by McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member David Vorp, PhD, Associate Dean for Research, Swanson School of Engineering, and the John A. Swanson Professor of Bioengineering—seeks to understand and develop solutions to the causes and effects of disease in tubular tissue and organs. Part of this research includes a closer look at abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA)—the 15th leading cause of death in the United States.
The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that — like pouring water atop a wellhead before pumping — the airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are “primed” for infection by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in more severe symptoms, poorer outcomes, and a greater likelihood of death.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Liver Research Center, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Computational Biology Department have been awarded almost $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new approaches for producing liver organoids — tiny, lab-grown human organs that have potential for disease modeling, drug discovery, and transplantation.
Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in the United States and the contributing factor for one in every four deaths. An improved understanding of the mechanisms behind atherosclerosis, a common contributor to cardiovascular disease, may help guide new therapeutic strategies to combat this deadly disease.
Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine described a new phenomenon in which the deletion of a single gene involved in liver embryogenesis completely wipes out bile ducts of newborn mice. But despite a major defect in their bile excretion system, those animals don’t die immediately after birth. Rather, they survive for up to eight months and remain physically active, if small and yellow-tinted.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine faculty member Donna Stolz, PhD, Associate Director of the Center for Biologic Imaging, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Cell Biology and Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, is a co-author on a study where it was found by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine neurologists that specialized immune cells that accumulate in the brain in the days and weeks after a stroke promote neural functions in mice, pointing to a potential immunotherapy that may boost recovery after the acute injury is over.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine faculty member Kacey Marra, PhD, Professor, Departments of Plastic Surgery and Bioengineering, Vice Chair of Research, Department of Plastic Surgery, recently was awarded a 2-year, $2,085,067 Department of Defense (DOD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program (PRMRP), Technology/Therapeutic Development Award (TTDA) grant to obtain regulatory approval for her novel nerve guide. This will provide funds to finish the necessary testing of the nerve guide to get approval for the first human clinical trial. The co-investigator is Anthony Windebank, MD, Professor of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, where the team will optimize the manufacturing process of the nerve guides under GMP conditions.
Paul Kirsch of Greentree is a retired U.S. Marine and Reservist, teacher and administrator in the Northgate and Keystone Oaks school districts, and a former Keystone Oaks School Board member. He had his first job in sixth grade and worked post-retirement until he was 80, teaching education classes at a local college. Now at age 87, Mr. Kirsch’s upbeat attitude and enthusiasm for life hasn’t waned.
For tens of millions of patients who battle chronic lung diseases, present-day care options are mostly limited to short-term drug and oxygen therapy. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member and Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Biomedical Engineering’s Interim Department Head and Professor Keith Cook, PhD, is working on innovative technologies to advance the long-term effectiveness and future use of artificial organs to address this worldwide issue.
With their article published in Nature, the National Institutes of Health’s Somatic Cell Gene Editing Consortium provided a detailed update on the progress of their nationwide effort to develop safer and more effective methods to edit the genomes of disease-relevant somatic cells and reduce the burden of disease caused by genetic changes. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Samira Kiani, MD, Associate Professor, Liver Research Center, Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, is a co-author of this work.
