*** BME Faculty Candidate ***

Sung Jin Park, PhD*
Research Associate
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Harvard University

In Vitro Cardiac Biohybrid Models for Personalized Medicine

ABSTRACT

Personalized medicine, which involves an individualized genotype-specific approach, has the potential to revolutionize patient care, especially for cardiac diseases, a leading cause of death globally. However, translating genetic information into clinical practice has been challenging owing to the physiological intricacy of the cardiac system. Recently, biologically engineered in vitro models have received attention for their potential in deciphering the functional consequences of genetic variations. Unfortunately, current models lack the structural and functional complexities needed to map the genotypic variants to clinical phenotypes. In this talk, I will present our biohybrid approach to address design challenges with in vitro cardiac models in terms of scale, control, and readouts. The engineering design process will be illustrated in these tissue-engineered systems―the tissue-engineered stingray and an in vitro model of the inherited cardiac disease catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT). The biohybrid design principles of scale-control-readouts were implemented to reproduce coordinated undulating fin motions in the tissue-engineered stingray, allowing us to better understand and recapitulate the ventricular contractile motions of the heart. These insights laid the foundation for integrating of stem cell–derived patient cardiomyocytes into tissue-engineered systems, enabling us to reproduce abnormal muscle activation patterns and asynchronized muscle contractions of CPVT patient-specific diseased cardiac tissue. These preliminary results capture the potential and progress of utilizing engineered biohybrid systems for personalized medicine.

Host:  Hee Cheol Cho, Ph.D.