News

Jonathan Macoskey (BME Class 2015) was the recipient of the 2014 Robert W. Young Award for Undergraduate Student Research in Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America. The Robert W. Young Award will provide resources for Jonathan to complete his proposed research project focused on developing a high-frequency ultrasound technique to visualize and quantify material properties of engineered tissue constructs. Jonathan is an undergraduate research assistant working in Professor Diane Dalecki's biomedical ultrasound laboratory, and his project contributes to a joint collaboration between Professor Dalecki and Professor Denise Hocking lab (Pharmacology and Physiology) dedicated to developing new ultrasound technologies for tissue engineering.

Diane Dalecki, Ph.D. (BME) and Denise C. Hocking, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology) have received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) for their project titled Ultrasound standing wave fields for vascular engineering. The goal of this 4-year project is to advance a novel ultrasound technology to fabricate complex, functional microvascular networks within three-dimensional engineered constructs.

Collaborators on this project are Maria Helguera, Ph.D. (Imaging Sciences, RIT), Ingrid Sarelius, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology) and Angela Glading, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology).

New, versatile vascularization strategies are needed to produce small-scale 3D tissue models and are critical for the fabrication of large-scale engineered tissues. The noninvasive capacity of ultrasound also enables innovative capabilities for fabricating microvessel networks within hydrogels injected within tissues. The successful completion of this project will provide new tools for tissue engineering and for a variety of clinical reconstructive and vascular surgery applications.

Yelena Lerman is the recipient of the Medical Faculty Council Travel Award in Basic Science Research for Spring 2014. Yelena is in her sixth year of the Pharmacology PhD program under the mentorship of Dr. Minsoo Kim in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. Yelena gave an oral and poster presentation of her work on “Exacerbated tissue homing of neutrophils during sepsis and TLR2-induced cytokine production are regulated by integrin a3b1” at the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) meeting in May 2014. Her work evaluated the surface expression kinetics of b1 and b3 integrin heterodimers on neutrophils during sepsis in both mice and humans. She showed that only integrin a3b1 is significantly upregulated during sepsis. Previous studies suggested a role for IL-10 as a regulator of the transition from mild sepsis to irreversible septic shock. Thus, sepsis progression could be modulated by altering IL-10 release and α3β1 upregulation.

Graduate student, Yelena Lerman received the Trainee Abstract Award at the 2014 AAI Immunology Conference for her work, Exacerbated tissue homing of neutrophils during sepsis and TLR2-induced cytokine production are regulated by integrin a3b1.

Yelena currently works in Dr. Minsoo Kim's lab.

Tissue engineering has resulted in some remarkable achievements: skin substitutes, cartilage replacements, artificial bladders, urethral segments, blood vessels, bronchial tubes and corneal tissue substitutes.

But these advances have been confined primarily to fairly simple organs comprised of thin structures, Denise Hocking, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology, noted at last week's presentation in the Crossing Elmwood seminar series.