Speaker

Julian Lee, PhD candidate, Wayne State University

Abstract

Atherosclerosis costs $431.8 billion yearly and accounts for nearly 1 in every 5 deaths. The progression of atherosclerosis is seen over decades, though a benchtop model is still unavailable. Pharmacotherapy has not changed significantly for decades. We hypothesize that a lack of human-relevant disease models is responsible. Our lab proposes a benchtop model for atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease (CAD) utilizing our laboratory’s tissue engineering methods. For initial experiments, we used our lab’s tissue engineering technique to form vessels from HASMC (human aortic smooth muscle cells) and PtFb (patient fibroblast) cells. We propose to create vessels from patient tissues for benchtop testing of disease progression and potentially explore response to pharmaceuticals.