Translational Microfluidics Laboratory

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.

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

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

Elizabeth is the first PhD student to graduate from the Polacheck Lab. She walked at the departmental commencement on Friday, May 10. Congratulations, Dr. Doherty; we'll miss you!

Elizabeth defended her thesis on Cell-Derived Matrix platforms for microphysiological modeling of Vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Congratulations, Dr. Doherty!