Carmen Julia Gil
BME PhD Proposal Presentation

Date: 2022-10-28
Time: 11am-1pm
Location / Meeting Link: HRSB E482 / https://emory.zoom.us/j/91367853909

Committee Members:
Vahid Serpooshan, PhD (Advisor); Scott Hollister, PhD; Prasad Lakshmi Dasi, PhD; Ilanit Itzhaki, PhD; Ryan Roeder, PhD


Title: 3D bioprinting of a CT-visible patient-specific cardiac patch device to repair adult myocardium following heart attack

Abstract:
Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide. Cardiac patch-based regenerative therapies have shown great promise in the treatment of myocardial infarction (MI). The clinical applications of patch devices, however, face major limitations mainly due to the inadequate integration of typically nonvascular implanted grafts with the recipient heart muscle tissue, the lack of patient and damage specificity, and insufficient perfusion. Further, there is a need for nondestructive imaging techniques that enable precise monitoring of the cardiac patch function following implantation. 3D Bioprinting is revolutionizing the fields of personalized and precision medicine by enabling the manufacturing of bioartificial constructs that precisely recapitulate the structural and functional characteristics of native tissues/organs. Particularly in cardiovascular regenerative medicine, bioprinted tissue constructs have demonstrated great potentials as medical patch devices in repairing damaged/diseased heart tissue. Using multi-material 3D bioprinting and photon counting computed tomography (PCCT) technologies, this project aims at developing a new precision medicine approach to custom-engineer patient and tissue-specific vascular patch devices with PCCT visibility. The hypothesis is that cardiac patch devices with customized architecture and vasculature can be fabricated to closely correspond to those of the recipient heart tissue and be incorporated with multiple contrast agents to track various functions of the patch. Aim 1 will seek design and development of traceable vascular patch devices and their evaluation in vivo and in vitro. Aim 2 will optimize the design of a vascular network within the patch and assess the in vitro imaging properties under flow. Aim 3 will investigate the function of the bioprinted vascular cardiac patch in vivo. Multiple PCCT-visible cardiac bioinks, consisting of distinct contrast agent-laden hydrogel formulations, will be used to bioprint patch structures that closely correspond with the geometry and vascular structure of the target MI tissue. PCCT will distinguish multiple contrast agents to assess patch location, integration/degradation, and perfusion, both in vitro and in a mouse model of MI in vivo. In summary, establishing this novel, high-fidelity, theranostic platform with remarkably high precision, tunability, and reproducibility would be paradigm changing and open new prospects for a broad range of tissue engineering applications