Translational Microfluidics Laboratory

Great work by the Kutys lab was just published in the Life Science Alliance. Tanya, a recently minted PhD from the Kutys lab, investigates the mechanisms by which Notch1 polarizes and responds to fluid shear stress. More can be found here: https://www.life-science-alliance.org/content/9/4/e202503599

The Polacheck Lab and Carter Cao's lab at the Eshleman School of Pharmacy were awarded a gran through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) through the Computational ADME-Tox and Physiology Analysis for Safer Therapeutics (CATALYST) program. The grant will fund the Polacheck Lab to develop high-throughput, patient-specific, immune-competent organ-on-chip models that will inform the development of more accurate pharmokinetic models and toxicity predictions,

Bill traveled to Baltimore to present recent work by Dr. Doherty and Ryan on the development of tissue-engineered approaches for modeling vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The invited talk at the American Society for Matrix Biology was in a special session focused on arteriopathies and was supported by the Marfan Foundation.

Welcome to Dr. Kristin Kim from Dr. Chris Lemmon's lab at VCU! We are very excited to have Kristin join to take on efforts involving scale-up and reproducibility for fabricating organs-on-chip. Dr. Kim's deep knowledge in mechanotransduction and cell-matrix adhesion signaling will be critical for developing preclinical microphysiological tools during her time as a postdoc in the Polacheck Lab.

Bill presented recent work by Dr. Aw and Chloe on fluid mechanotransduction by the vascular endothelium to the NSF Center for Engineering Mechanobiology, headquartered at the University of Pennsylvania. It was good to see old friends and collaborators and to have a chance to discuss how mechanotransduction goes awry in vascular malformations.

Dr. Danica Dy, who recently defended her PhD in Dr. Rob Wirka's lab, published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine on the funcitonal role of TWIST1 in arterial smooth muscle. TWIST1 has been identified as a causal gene that increases risk for several vascular diseases, yet the molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Dr. Rathod from the Polacheck Lab helped to develop functional assays for smooth muscle cell migration that helped elucidate how TWIST1 modulates cellular phenot

Aanya and colleagues report on new technology to measure vasoconstriction and vasodilation of arterial tissue. The platforms, based on previous work by UNC/NCSU BME colleague Dr. Wes Legant, consist of microfabricated cantilevers with known mechanical properties that can be used to quantitatively determine force generation by vascular smooth muscle cells. Aanya and colleagues in the Polacheck Lab had to develop an entirely new manufacturing protocol to tune the system appropr

Welcome to McKenzie Garcia, who recently joined the lab as a graduate student. She will be working on a number of different projects as she seeks to build on her considerable skill sets in 3D printing and additive manufacturing. Welcome to the team!

Drs. Polacheck and Cao discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with new approach methodologies (NAMs) in preclinical drug development. This perspective piece comes after nearly a year of discussion, planning, and collaboration between the Polacheck and Cao labs to develop organ-on-chip platforms that can replace or augment animal models in pre-clinical drug development. The perspective can be found here .

Bill attended the 8th Annual Mid-Atlantic Advanced Biomanufacturing Symposium in Charlottesville to present recent work by Ryan and Maddie on the development of human-derived organ-on-chip technology that leverages cell-derived extracellular matrix hydrogels. It was a fantastic meeting, focused on academic and industry partnership toward real-world impact. Information on the symposium can be found here .

Mitesh's work investigating the effects of blood pressure and flow on immune cell adhesion and migration across the endothelial wall in the context of chronic kidney disease was just published. The paper is entitled, "Microphysiological uremia model reveals biophysical potentiators of vascular dysfunction," and can be viewed via open access here . This work was gratiously supported by the UNC Institute for Convergent Science and continues a long-standing collaboration between

Dr. Polacheck publishes a perspective on a new method for measuring cell-generated forces in living tissues by high-resolution imaging of embedded force sensors. The perspective can be found here .

Madeline Singletary, an incredibly hard working and creative undergraduate researcher, will continue her work in the Polacheck Lab as a technician over the next year. This opportunity will allow her to further develop photocrosslinkable human cell-derived hydrogels, a technology that she has been developing throughout her undergraduate honors thesis.

Sree Elayaperumal, an Abrams Scholar and honors research thesis candidate in the Polacheck Lab, was awarded teh Barry Goldwater Scholarship for undergraduate research. The scholarship is one of the most prestigious undergraduate awards in the US and was established by Congress to support college sophomores and juniors who demonstrate exceptional acadmic achievement and a committment to research. The UNC BME press release can be found here . Congratulations, Sree!

Abel Abraham, a former undergraduate researcher in the group and currently a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T., was awarded a graduate research fellowship from the NSF. This is one of a long, long list of well-deserved awards for Abel, including the Henderson Award for Mathematics, and a Fulbright Scholarship. Congratulations, Abel!

The Brown Lab, in collaboration with the Polacheck and Haider Labs, published on the development of colloidal-fibrillar composite hydrogels for use in healing of wounds involving the vasculature. The paper is a tour de force led by an incredibly hard working graduate student, Nina Moiseiwitsch, who worked with Dr. Aw to characterize vascular morphogensis within colloidal-fibrillar hydrogels embedded in microfluidic devices. The open access paper can be found here .

Wen's recent work investigating the formation and propagation of vascular malformations was chosen by the editor as an article to highlight in a special issue focused on Mechanomedicine. Wen and other members of the lab used microfluidic models of vascular malformations to understand how fluid transport and hemodynamics contributes to lesion growth and disease pathogenesis. Check out the work here: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/apb/article/9/1/016106/3333897/Dysfunctional-mechanot

A recently accepted comprehensive review of lymphatic-on-chip models highlights advances and challenges in humanized models of the lymphatic system. An advanced copy of the article to be published in Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering was recently posted on the journal's website: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-bioeng-110222-100246

Congrats to Akash Bhowmik, a summer undergraduate researcher in our lab, who won 1st place for an undergraduate poster at the 2024 Triangle Computational and Applied Mathematics Symposium. Awesome work!

UNC office of technology commercialization recently highlighted the humanized ECM developed by the Polacheck Lab. Shout out to Elizabeth and Ryan for their awesome work pushing this technology forward! More information .