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.
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.
Peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a relatively rare but serious complication of pregnancy in which the heart muscle weakens. The source of the condition is unknown, but researchers believe it impacts at least one in 2,000 live births in the US. Greater risk for the disease is associated with preeclampsia, twin or multiple births, older maternal age, some genetic mutations, and ethnicity. Sarah Yahr Tucker reported on PPCM for Popular Science.
An article in The Atlantic on the effects of COVID-19 on children included input from McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Ivet Bahar, PhD, Distinguished Professor, the John K. Vries Chair, and the Founding Chair in the Department of Computational & Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Bahar’s work, which appeared in the PNAS in September 2020, was referenced as a part of the author’s research. Roxanne Khamsi wrote the story for The Atlantic.
This year, 20 projects were selected for 2021 Seed Grant Program, and a project of McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Rory Cooper, PhD, FISA and Paralyzed Veterans of America Professor and Distinguished Professor of the Department of Rehabilitation Science & Technology and Founding Director and VA Senior Research Career Scientist of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories, was one of the projects funded.
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.
