Four upcoming seniors in the Bioengineering Department were invited to attend Coulter College.  Not only did the students attend the event, they won both pitch competitions in their problem area of improving the treatment of Stroke in resource constrained areas.

The event was hosted at Medtronic Headquarters in Minneapolis and 12 Universities were represented. The students worked together with business, clinical, and design mentors to develop a potential solution and a commercial case to improve access to stroke treatment.  Dylan Carlson, Kai Sabio, Mikki Pott and Josh Volkman represented CU Denver and made up the CU Denver Stroke Crew team at Coulter College.

Congratulations to Cristin Welle, PhD, assistant professor in neurosurgery and bioengineering, on receiving a $2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to pilot the use of peripheral neuromodulation to accelerate motor learning. The grant, which will be received over four years, comes from the DARPA Biological Technologies Office through the Targeted Neuroplasticity Training program, led by Tristan McClure-Begley, PhD, who had been on the CU Boulder faculty prior to joining DARPA in October 2017. The goals of this project are to understand the effects of precisely timed stimulation of the vagus nerve during motor learning on motor performance, and to utilize optogenetics, electrophysiology and in vivo two-photon imaging to investigate the mechanisms that underlie this effect. This work could lead to translational opportunities using invasive or non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation to improve rehabilitation from stroke or to drive enhancements in the learning and performance of skilled tasks.

The Center for Women’s Health Research (CWHR) creates a day for high-school girls to come on campus and learn about career opportunities in healthcare and science.  We were told that Bioengineering was a highlight of the day for the girls.  Special thanks to Kendall Hunter, Bradford Smith, Emily Gibson, Michelle Mellenthin, Courtney Mattson,  Baris Ozbay, and Connor McCullough for their participation.  Here are some quotes the CWHR shared from student evaluations:

“The most interesting thing that I learned today was seeing how we can draw conclusions about human brains from mouse brains.”

“I loved learning about the use of lasers to map out the brain and why cardiac vessels need to be elastic.”

“It was really interesting to see learn how researchers can speed up and slow down a mouse’s breathing in order to understand more about breathing problems in humans.”

“One of the most fascinating things that I learned was how admired the engineers are here.”

To read about the event here is a link to the CWHR webpage: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/centers/WomensHealth/events/Pages/Girls%e2%80%99%20Career%20Day.aspx

 

Margaret Ferrari is a first-year PhD candidate in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus, her focus is on Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS).  HLHS is a complex congenital heart defect resulting in an underdeveloped left side of the heart. It alone accounts for up to 1,500 severe defects per year requiring surgery. The current standard of care involves three invasive open- heart surgeries in the first three years of life. The third operation, the Fontan procedure, includes connection of the vena cava to the pulmonary artery using a bio-inert graft to reduce work required by the right ventricle. While this operation greatly extends the lives of HLHS patients, the Fontan circuit eventually fails, and the only solution is a scarcely available donor heart. This failed circuit is explained by the “Fontan paradox” where central venous pressures build up over time, causing increased systemic resistance. The abnormal hemodynamics are associated with severe complications including protein-losing enteropathy, plastic bronchitis, and hepatic fibrosis and carcinoma. This project will address the Fontan paradox by developing a tissue engineered graft with highly contractile, patient specific cells for use in the Fontan procedure. Margaret (Meg) will be working under Jeffrey Jacot, PhD in the Jacot Lab for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine in the Bioengineering Department at Anschutz Medical Campus. Additionally, she will be spending time in the clinic with Mike Di Maria, MD, a co-director of the Single Ventricle Care Program at Children’s Hospital Colorado. This mentorship will provide a platform for impactful translational research and give hope to patients and families suffering from HLHS.

 

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.

We just wrapped up the first session of our Bioengineering Opportunities and Leadership Training (BOLT) Camp, and it was an amazing week! Students from all over Colorado came to the Anschutz Campus for 4 days packed full of hands-on learning.

BOLT campers did everything from learning to solder, to building optical heart rate monitors, to running tissue engineering experiments. They got to visit the roof of Children’s Hospital to check out the specially engineered pediatric Flight For Life helicopter, and they learned about anatomy and the human body from the Anschutz AHEC Anatomy team. Throughout the week, students heard from clinicians, researchers, students, and faculty on all facets of bioengineering. In between all of this, students prototyped their own engineering solutions to real clinical problems. The whirlwind week of learning and fun ended with design presentations to a panel of judges, camp awards, and an ice cream social.

Students left BOLT with a greater understanding of the field of bioengineering, applicable knowledge and practical lab skills, and hopefully even more passion for STEM than before! Now it’s time for the team to prep for the next group – BOLT Session Two starts in less than a month!

Hassan El-Batal, a junior in the Department of Bioengineering was recently awarded a 2018-2019 Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) mini grant while working in the Magin Lab.  The UROP is funded through the Colorado Clinical Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI).  This research collaboration focuses on the multiple particle tracking (MPT) and he will be programing a user-friendly graphical interface purposed for MPT.  This investigation and software design may help overcome limitations of studying mucociliary clearance (MCC) defects in preclinical animal models and answer questions about MCC dysfunction in pulmonary diseases.  As part of the award he looks forward to presenting their findings at the Research and Creative Activities Symposium (RaCAS).

 

Maria Bortot, a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Bioengineering and Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, has been awarded the American Heart Association (AHA) predoctoral fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Jorge DiPaola. Non-surgical bleeding (NSB) is a major complication among patients with aortic stenosis and end-stage heart failure supported by ventricular assist devices or blood pumps such as extracorporeal mechanical oxygenators. Although the mechanism for NSB amongst these patients is not clearly understood, it has been associated with acquired von Willebrand syndrome, a disorder characterized by loss of high molecular weight multimers of von Willebrand factor (VWF). It has been proposed, but not yet demonstrated, that the high shear stress associated with VADs and AS can cause VWF elongation, facilitating excessive cleavage by its main protease, ADAMTS-13. Maria’s project is focused on assessing the effects of fluid dynamics on VWF conformation, cleavage as well as platelet activation and receptor shedding. Maria obtained her BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia. Then she was awarded a scholarship by the Argentinean  National Atomic Energy Commission in Argentina were she completed her Masters in Materials Engineering at Instituto Balserio, Universidad Nacional de  Cuyo. She was then awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and moved to the University of Colorado, AMC to first complete a the Masters program in Bioengineering before joining the DiPaola Laboratory to pursue her PhD.