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.
thing 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.
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.
