Translational Microfluidics Laboratory

Congratulations to Chloe Whitworth for defending her thesis entitled, "Uncovering novel roles for P300 and Notch1 as mechanotransducers in the vascular endothelium." She was awarded a PhD from the Genetics and Molecular Biology Department in the UNC School of Medicine. The work is highly multidisciplinary but all the more impressive as it was done in an engineering laboratory. We will miss her when she goes on to bigger and better things!

Harry's 2023 paper entitled, "A facile fluid pressure system reveals differential cellular response to interstitial pressure gradients and flow" was recently selected as a best paper in the journal. The paper can be found here, and a description of the award is here. This work was highly collaborative with contributions from engineers and biologists from the lab and describes a very clever system that Harry designed to provide high precision for physiologic pressure regulati

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

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

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 .

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

Awesome talk by an awesome post-bac in our lab, Aanya Sawhney on cell mechanics of vascular malformations in the vascular bioengineering session at BMES 2024 !

Dr. Polacheck receives a 2024 Young Innovator Award from the Cell and Molecular Bioengineering special interest group of the Biomedical Engineering Society based on the fantastic work of Chloe Whitworth.

Chloe gives an oral presentation on P300's modulation of endothelial mechanotransduction of fluid shear stress. Elizabeth gave a poster presentation on the generation of human vasculature-on-chip systems using cell-derived matrix hydrogels. Congratulations, Chloe and Elizabeth!