UAB - School of Engineering

Overexpression of Cell-Cycle Activator Gene Enhances Repair of Dead Heart Muscle

zhang Researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering report a significant advance in efforts to repair a damaged heart after a heart attack, using grafted heart-muscle cells to create a repair patch. The key was overexpressing a gene that activates the cell-cycle of the grafted muscle cells, so they grow and divide more than control grafted cells.

Up to now, an extremely low amount of engraftment of cardiomyocytes has been a stumbling block in hopes to use grafted cells to repair hearts after a heart attack. Without the successful repair that a graft could potentially offer, the damaged heart is prone to later heart failure and patient death.

In experiments in a mouse model, UAB researchers showed that gene overexpression of the cell-cycle activator CCND2 increased the proliferation of grafted cardiomyocytes. This led to increased remuscularization of the heart at the dead-tissue site of the heart attack, a larger graft size, improved cardiac function and decreased size of the dead tissue, or infarct.

Besides regenerating muscle, the grafted cells also increased new blood vessel formation at the border zone of the infarct, apparently through increased activation of the paracrine mechanism. The UAB team used cardiomyocytes that were derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, as they work toward a goal of eventual clinical treatment for human heart attack patients.

This UAB study, published online in Circulation Research, is led by Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., chair and professor of the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering and holder of the T. Michael and Gillian Goodrich Endowed Chair of Engineering Leadership.

EITD Included in $500-Million Contract for ISS Work

iss The latest EITD contract is one of many the group has entered during its long history of working with NASA. In 2016, EITD won two NASA Group Awards for projects related to the ISS.The UAB Engineering and Innovative Technology Development (EITD) research group was recently announced as a partner in a $500-million contract issued from NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) Program Office.

The Research, Engineering, and Mission Integration (REMIS) contract was awarded to Teledyne Brown Engineering (TBE) with EITD listed as a partner on the project. “This is similar to some other contracts we’ve had in that NASA will issue task order requests, and we will submit proposals for the tasks that fit our areas of expertise,” said Lee Moradi, EITD director and professor of mechanical engineering. “The funding that comes to UAB will depend on which jobs our team is included on over the length of the contract, which is five years with a two-year option.”

REMIS is an IDIQ (Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity) contract and has a total of 16 contractors competing on the upcoming delivery orders.

While EITD is just one part of a larger team included in the contract, the likelihood that projects will come to UAB is high. EITD already has several contracts for ISS-related projects, including design and maintenance of a series of transportable freezer units, design of a permanent orbiting set of freezer units, and development of technology for rapid-freezing of scientific samples in orbit.

Drone Power

bridges

SOE Professor Says Drones Have Potential to Find Flaws in Aging Bridges

Nasim Uddin, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, is using a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to explore ways to make America's bridges safer.

His plan includes high-tech sensors and data-collecting drones that could exponentially increase the efficiency of bridge inspections.

BME Professor Collaborates on Dialysis Breakthrough

$2-Million Grant Seeks to Improve Care of Patients with Kidney Disease

jun endometriotics Endomimetics, a company created by UAB cardiologist Brigitta Brott and BME professor Ho-Wook Jun, is part of a UAB team that has received a $2-million NIH grant to develop a new tool for improving hemodialysis.A company cofounded by biomedical engineering professor Ho Wook Jun, Ph.D., is teaming up with UAB physicians and researchers to improve care for patients with end-stage kidney disease, thanks to a $2-million grant from the National institutes of Health.

Today, more than 600,000 people in the U.S. are living with end-stage kidney disease, and more than 80 percent of the affected patients use hemodialysis as their renal replacement modality of choice. The Achilles’ heel in the care of dialysis patients is the development of a functioning and durable vascular access, preferably an arteriovenous fistula (AVF), which is a surgically created connection from an artery to a vein that removes and returns blood from the patient’s arm. This acts as the transport system during the dialysis process of cleaning toxins out of the blood and passing the blood through an artificial kidney.

Jun’s company, Endomimetics, has collaborated on development of an AVF. “When you need dialysis, you have to have a needle put in three times a week to get the fluid exchanged,” said Brigitta Brott, M.D., UAB cardiologist and professor of medicine, and co-founder of Endomimetics. “The best way to do that is to have a direct connection between the artery and vein.”

“AVFs are the current gold standard of care for patients of dialysis,” said Timmy Lee, M.D., professor in UAB’s Division of Nephrology. “Unfortunately, that gold standard of care is not perfect — most AVFs never develop successfully to be used for dialysis treatment.”

Patients who have AVFs that fail are faced with months of time before they are able to receive another AVF, which means they must receive dialysis with a catheter, which carries a host of its own issues.

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