Bioengineering students Rocker and Davis-Hall awarded CCTSI Predoctoral Fellowships

Adam Rocker, a second-year PhD candidate in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus, has been awarded the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) TL-1 Pre-doctoral Fellowship for his proposed thesis work on developing an injectable polymer delivery system to treat coronary artery disease. One consequence of this disease is a myocardial infarction (MI), better known as a heart attack, which inhibits the flow of blood and vital nutrients to the heart. The current standard of care for MI aims for early reperfusion of the occluded vessels to prevent further cell death using surgical or pharmacological agents. However, biomedical approaches to restore the blood supply, by delivering growth factors locally to promote the formation of new blood vessels, may present a faster and less invasive treatment option, with the essential benefit of inducing cardiac tissue regeneration. Adam will be investigating this tissue engineering approach for treating coronary artery disease under the mentorship of Dr. Daewon Park, an Associate Professor in Bioengineering, and Dr. Luisa Mestroni, a Professor of Medicine in Cardiology. Collaborations by this scientist-physician team and the CCTSI will help develop translational therapies at the basic science level into clinical treatments.