In June 2018 just after completing her bachelor’s in Bioengineering from CU Denver/Anschutz Samantha Sharrar traveled with Gabriela Reyes, a current Masters in Public Health student to the CU Trifinio Clinic site in rural Guatemala for three weeks. Cassandra Howard, a Bioengineering Instructor, joined the students for the first week of their trip. The focus of the trip was the implementation of a water quality assessment project. Samantha and Gabby trained local Youth Leaders on how to use field incubators to run water quality tests on 3M™ Petrifilms. As part of the junior design course, students designed the field incubators. Samantha, Gabby and the Youth Leaders worked with community members to obtain water samples, plate the samples on the 3M™ Petrifilms and then incubate the films for 48 hours in the battery-powered field incubators. The results were then presented back to the community in a demonstration led by the youth leaders to educate community members on the importance of filtering or boiling water. One additional component of the project that was trialed during the trip was a smartphone app, built by Samantha to help automate the interpretation and data storage of the water assessments. This project was an initial pilot program for the Department of Bioengineering. The Department is now offering a 3 credit 2-week faculty-led Global Health Design course in May/June 2019. The Bioengineering faculty and students involved in the project want to thank Dr. Dan Olson, Dr. Elizabeth Carlton, Dr. Molly Lamb, Cristina Del Hoyo, Gabby Reyes, and the staff and youth leaders at the Trifinio site. 

A medical device company founded by two University of Colorado Denver and CU Anschutz Medical Campus professors was recently acquired by Stryker, one of the world’s leading medical technology companies.

Dr. Omer Mei-Dan, a sports surgeon and associate professor of orthopedics at the CU School of Medicine and Dr. Robin Shandas, chair of bioengineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus collaborated on the Pivot Guardian, the industry’s first post-free hip distraction system, designed to mitigate groin complications and heel slip associated with hip arthroscopy.

Working with Dr. Jacob Segil, Instructor in Engineering Plus at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Brett Schumer, an orthopedic device consultant, Drs. Mei-Dan and Shandas created MITA LLC to bring Dr. Mei-Dan’s novel hip distraction technique to market. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The acquisition shows the impact of pairing clinical faculty with bioengineers to bring promising ideas to market. The total time between initial discussions and company exit was less than two years.

“The fact that our Bioengineering Department is located on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus really facilitates such multi-disciplinary interactions,” said Professor Shandas, founding chair of the department who has co-founded several other companies with clinical faculty. “We built a technical team very quickly to execute on Dr. Mei-Dan’s vision to help his patients, while at the same time building the startup company to carry the idea into commercial reality.”

Dr. Mei-Dan agreed.

“Having biomedical engineers as in-house partners who can quickly understand the clinical need, assemble a business-savvy technical team, and iterate through multiple prototypes efficiently is a huge great asset we have here on campus,” he said. “This great success gives me much confidence for future endeavors.”

Provided by CU Anschutz Medical Campus

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.