Megan L McCain,
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine,
University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine
Megan L. McCain, PhD, is the Chonette Early Career Chair and Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Keck School of Medicine of USC. Her research group, the Laboratory for Living Systems Engineering, engineers microscale mimics of human tissues, known as “Organs on Chips”. They implement these platforms to characterize human disease progression and identify promising therapeutic strategies on a personalized basis, with a focus on cardiac and skeletal muscle diseases. They also work closely with pharmaceutical companies to translate their platforms for next-generation pre-clinical drug screening. Megan is a recipient of a Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association and an Innovation Award from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. She has also been recognized as a Top Innovator Under 35 by MIT Technology Review and a Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering by the Biomedical Engineering Society. She received her PhD and postdoctoral training in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.
Heart Disease on a Chip: Engineering Dysfunctional Cardiac Tissues for Drug Screening and Personalized Medicine
Wednesday, 8 July 2015 at 16:30
Add to Calendar ▼2015-07-08 16:30:002015-07-08 17:30:00Europe/LondonHeart Disease on a Chip: Engineering Dysfunctional Cardiac Tissues for Drug Screening and Personalized MedicineSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the United States and unforeseen cardiotoxicity is a common reason for market withdrawal of pharmaceuticals. These statistics highlight our limited understanding of heart disease as well as our lack of tools for reliably predicting cardiac function. One reason for these issues is that researchers have traditionally relied on model systems that lack physiological relevance to the human heart, such as rodents or simplified cell culture platforms that do not recapitulate the architecture or microenvironment of native cardiac tissue. Here, I will describe new model systems, known as “heart on a chip,” that we have developed using microfabrication, biomaterials, and tissue engineering to better mimic and study heart tissue in vitro. I will focus on several cardiac disease models “on a chip” we have engineered to (1) model fibrosis by tuning the elastic moduli of extracellular matrix hydrogel substrates, (2) model volume overload and heart failure by cyclically stretching engineered neonatal rat cardiac tissues, and (3) model a human inherited cardiomyopathy by engineering tissues with induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cardiac myocytes reprogrammed from patient skin fibroblasts. These “heart disease on a chip” platforms are useful for identifying cardiac disease mechanisms, testing drugs for both toxicity and efficacy, and, with the addition of patient iPSC-derived cardiac myocytes, screening the functional therapeutic effects of drugs on a patient-by-patient basis.
Add to Calendar ▼2015-07-08 00:00:002015-07-09 00:00:00Europe/LondonOrgan-on-a-Chip ConferenceSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
Add to Calendar ▼2015-07-08 16:30:002015-07-08 17:30:00Europe/LondonHeart Disease on a Chip: Engineering Dysfunctional Cardiac Tissues for Drug Screening and Personalized MedicineSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com
