Giving moderately ill, hospitalized COVID-19 patients a full dose of a blood thinner improved their chances of leaving the hospital without needing mechanical ventilation. But this strategy did not yield the same results for COVID-19 patients who were critically ill, who needed intensive care-level support at the time of enrollment.
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Pablo Sanchez, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery; Vice Chairman, Benign Lung Diseases; Chief, Division of Lung Transplant and Lung Failure; Surgical Director, Lung Transplantation and ECMO; Director, Lung Transplant Research; and, Director, Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP) Program, all within the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. The UPMC Lung Transplant Program is one of the most recognized and experienced centers in the world. Physicians of this team evaluate many high-risk patients, including those needing re-transplantation. Beth Slack was one of these patients. Dr. Sanchez and Mrs. Slack were interviewed recently by Meghan Schiller, KDKA. Watch the interview here; part of their conversation transcript follows:
In a proof-of-concept study, researchers led by McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Riccardo Gottardi, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and head of the Bioengineering and Biomaterials Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), have created a coating that can be applied to endotracheal tubes and release antimicrobial peptides that target infectious bacteria with specificity. The innovation could reduce upper-airway bacterial inflammation during intubation, a situation that can lead to chronic inflammation and a condition called subglottic stenosis, the narrowing of the airway by an accumulation of scar tissue. The findings were published in the journal The Laryngoscope.
Advances in cardiac tissue engineering offer hope for an array of useful applications, from heart repair to disease modelling. As part of active, ongoing research related to bioengineering functional human organs, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Adam Feinberg, PhD, a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and his team are finding inspiration from the developing heart to rebuild human heart muscle.
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.
“If you had a patient in need of a dentist, which dentist would you refer them to?”
This is the question asked to thousands of dentists to help determine who the topDentists should be. Dentists and specialists are asked to take into consideration years of experience, continuing education, manner with patients, use of new techniques and technologies, and of course physical results. Pittsburgh Magazine’s annual list, which in 2021 contains more than 420 dentists and specialists, includes three McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty members:
McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Kathryn Whitehead, PhD, Associate Professor and Dean’s Career Fellow in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, recently participated in TED/Monteray. Her lab develops RNA and protein drug delivery systems and has a long-term goal of predicting the behavior of delivery materials in humans.
Efforts to understand cardiac disease progression and develop therapeutic tissues that can repair the human heart are just a few areas of focus for the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) research group of Adam Feinberg, PhD, a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at CMU and an affiliated faculty member of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. The group’s latest dynamic model, created in partnership with collaborators in the Netherlands, mimics physiologic loads on engineering heart muscle tissues, yielding an unprecedented view of how genetics and mechanical forces contribute to heart muscle function.
A sign of the strength of University of Pittsburgh’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem is the reauthorization earlier in 2021 of the Chancellor’s Gap Fund, which provides grants of $25,000 to $75,000 for innovators with promising discoveries to explore the commercial potential of their ideas.
A relevant cardiac health trend is the United States’ growing maternal mortality rate — the worst among industrialized countries. The majority of maternal deaths occur postpartum and result from hypertensive disorders like preeclampsia and gestational hypertension.
