faculty – Page 40 – Penn Bioengineering Blog

October 20, 2017

Lagrange Goes to Dani Bassett

Danielle S. Bassett, Eduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering, is the recipient of the 2017 Lagrange-CRT Foundation Prize. The prize, given by the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation in Turin, Italy, was created to encourage and honor researchers working in the field of complex systems.

Complex systems feature many interconnected parts whose individual behavior influences the outcomes of the whole. Examples include social media networks, ecological webs, stock markets, and in Bassett’s case, the brain. Her research maps and analyzes the networks of neurons that enable all manners of cognitive abilities, as well as how those networks evolve during development or malfunction in disease.

The prize comes with an award of €50,000, or roughly $60,000. It will be formally presented to Bassett at a ceremony in Turin next week. Bassett is the first woman to be the sole recipient of the prize since its inception in 2008. Lada Adamic won it alongside Xavier Gabaix in 2012.

Read more at the SEAS blog on Medium.

October 18, 2017

Chairs for BMES ’19 to Include Burdick

chairs Jason Burdick, Ph.D., who is a professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Bioengineering, has been named one of the three chairs of the 2019 annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), which be held here in Philadelphia on October 16-19. Dr. Burdick will share this position with two other Philadelphians: Alisa Morss Clyne, Ph.D., an associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Drexel University; and Ruth Ochia, Ph.D., an associate professor of instruction in bioengineering at Temple University. Drs. Burdick, Clyne, and Ochia will share the responsibility for planning the meeting and chairing it once it is in session.

“I am very happy to be appointed as a program chair for the 2019 BMES meeting in Philadelphia, along with Alisa Morss Clyne of Drexel University and Ruth Ochia of Temple University,” Dr. Burdick said when asked about the honor. “The three of us felt that it was important to represent the various biomedical engineering research and education programs within the city of Philadelphia, since the meeting will be held here. There is such a wealth of biomedical engineering efforts in Philly that provides great opportunities to engage in outreach and interaction with both the community and local industry during the meeting.”

September 13, 2017February 1, 2021

Bioengineers Get Support to Study Chronic Pain

Zhiliang Cheng, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, has received an R01 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study chronic pain. The grant, which provides nearly $1.7 million over the next five years, will support the work of Dr. Cheng, Bioengineering Professor Andrew Tsourkas, and Vice Provost for Education and Professor Beth Winkelstein, in developing a novel nanotechnology platform for greater effectiveness in radiculopathy treatment.

Based on the idea that phospholipase-A2 (PLA2) enzymes, which modulate inflammation, play an important role in pain due to nerve damage, the group’s research seeks to develop PLA2-responsive multifunctional nanoparticles (PRMNs) that could both deliver anti-inflammatory drugs and magnetic resonance contrast agents to sites of pain so that the molecular mechanisms at work in producing chronic pain can be imaged, as well as allowing for the closer monitoring of treatment.

This research builds on previous findings by Drs. Cheng, Tsourkas, and Winkelstein. In a 2011 paper, Drs. Tsourkas and Winkelstein used superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles to enhance magnetic resonance imaging of neurological injury in a rat model. Based on the theory of reactive oxygen species playing a role in pain following neural trauma, a subsequent paper published in July with Sonia Kartha as first author and Dr. Cheng as a coauthor found that a type of nanoparticle called polymersomes could be used to deploy superoxide dismutase, an antioxidant, to sites of neuropathic pain. The current grant-supported study combines the technologies developed in the previous studies.

“To the best of our knowledge, no studies have sought to combine and/or leverage this aspect of the inflammatory and PLA2 response for developing effective pain treatment. We hypothesize that this theranostic agent, which integrates both diagnostic and therapeutic functions into a single system, offers a unique opportunity and tremendous potential for monitoring and treating patients with direct, clinically translational impact,” Dr. Cheng said.

August 30, 2017

Penn Engineers Develop “WorMotel”

The roundworm C. elegans is one of the most important model organisms in biological research. With a transparent, millimeter-long body containing only about a thousand cells and a lifespan of a few weeks, there is no better way of deciphering the role of a given gene on a living creature’s anatomy or behavior. In addition, many of the genes discovered in the worm have been shown to have similar roles in other animals and humans.

In the era of big data, however, a single worm isn’t enough. Thousands upon thousands of individual organisms are necessary to compare many different genes and ensure the reliability of experimental results.

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have taken strides to make this type of high-throughput experiment feasible by developing a system they have dubbed “the WorMotel.” To demonstrate its effectiveness, the researchers have studied the role of a set of mutations and stress-inducing drugs on the aging of 1,935 of these organisms, specifically, what percentage of their lifespans they remain healthy and active.

The WorMotel system features index-card-sized plates made out of a transparent polymer. Each plate features 240 individual wells, in which a single worm lives its entire life. Automated systems keep them fed and stimulated while machine vision algorithms track and record their behavior.

The WorMotel system is also designed to be highly scalable. Robotic carousels can automatically swap hundreds of WorMotel plates in and out of analysis chambers, studying up to 57,600 worms in a single experiment.

The study, published in the journal eLife, was led by Christopher Fang-Yen, Wilf Family Term Assistant Professor in Bioengineering in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Matthew Churgin, a former graduate student (now a postdoctoral fellow) in his lab. They collaborated with David Raizen, an Associate Professor of Neurology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Former Fang-Yen lab members Sang-Kyu Jung, Chih-Chieh (Jay) Yu, and Xiangmei Chen also contributed to the research.

August 28, 2017October 25, 2017

New Faculty: Interview With Joel Boerckel

Continuing with our series of interviews with new faculty members, we feature this interview with Dr. Joel Boerckel, who has a dual appointment in the Department of Bioengineering at Penn and the Perelman School of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Dr. Boerckel’s research concerns the mechanobiology of development and regeneration. Here, he speaks with Andrew Mathis about his career to this point and where he sees the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine heading over the future. Enjoy!

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August 7, 2017

Phillips-Cremins Research Identifies Protein Involved in Brain Development

The vast majority of genetic mutations that are associated with disease occur at sites in the genome that aren’t genes. These sequences of DNA don’t code for proteins themselves, but provide an additional layer of instructions that determine if and when particular genes are expressed. Researchers are only beginning to understand how the non-coding regions of the genome influence gene expression and might be disrupted in disease.

Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, studies the three-dimensional folding of the genome and the role it plays in brain development. When a stretch of DNA folds, it creates a higher-order structure called a looping interaction, or “loop.” In doing so, it brings non-coding sites into physical contact with their target genes, precisely regulating gene expression in space and time during development.

Phillips-Cremins and lab member Jonathan Beagan have led a new study identifying a new protein that connects loops in embryonic stem cells as they begin to differentiate into types of neurons. Though the study was conducted in mice, these findings inform aspects of human brain development, including how the genetic material folds in the 3-D nucleus and is reconfigured as stem cells become specialized. Better understanding of these mechanisms may be relevant to a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Cremins lab members Michael Duong, Katelyn Titus, Linda Zhou, Zhendong Cao, Jingjing Ma, Caroline Lachanski and Daniel Gillis also contributed to the study, which was published in the journal Genome Research.

Continue reading at the SEAS blog.

August 4, 2017October 25, 2017

New Faculty: Interview With Konrad Kording

This week, we present our interview with incoming faculty member Konrad Kording, who starts as a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine. Konrad and Andrew Mathis discuss what neuroscience is and isn’t, the “C” word (consciousness), and what it’s like for a native of Germany to live in the United States.

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August 1, 2017

Tsourkas Joint Venture Featured in “Inquirer”

Andrew Tsourkas, Ph.D., who is an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering, cofounded PolyAurum LLC, a company using gold particles to develop technologies to improve cancer therapies, in 2015. Dr. Tsourkas founded the company with two faculty members from the Perelman School of Medicine: Jay Dorsey, M.D., Ph.D., and Dave Cormode, Ph.D., the latter of whom is also a secondary factory member in BE. The name PolyAurum combines the word polymer with aurum, the Latin word for “gold.” Gold has been found to be able to enhance the effects of radiation therapy in cancer without damaging healthy tissue.

Dr. Tsourkas’s work with his colleagues at PolyAurum was featured recently in the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Debra Travers, the CEO of PolyAurum and herself a cancer survivor, was interviewed by the newspaper for its business section.

According to the article, Drs. Tsourkas and Cormode

have worked to make gold more biocompatible, resulting in PolyAurum’s current technology, Dorsey said. The gold nanocrystals are contained in a biodegradable polymer that allows enough metal to collect in a tumor. The polymer then breaks down, releasing the gold for excretion from the body so that it does not build up in key organs.

New Faculty: Interview With Lukasz Bugaj

This week, we present our interview with incoming faculty member Lukasz Bugaj, who starts as an assistant professor at Penn BE in January. Lukasz and Andrew Mathis discuss tennis and crew, Lukasz’s subfield of optogenetics, and life as the child of a statistician.

Please note: This was our first interview recorded by telephone. We will try to improve the quality of the audio, but for now, be advised that the questions are at a far lower volume than the responses, so set your volume, accordingly, particularly if you are listening on headphones.

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July 26, 2017July 26, 2017

Burdick Recognized by NIH in Two Programs

Jason Burdick, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Bioengineering, was among the recent recipients of a grant from Sharing Partnership for Innovative Research in Translation (SPIRiT), a pilot grant program awarded by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Burdick’s research, undertaken with Albert Sinusas, MD, of Yale, concerns the development of a noninvasive treatment to limit the damage to the heart caused by heart attacks, which are suffered annually by almost 750,000 Americans. Using single-photo emission computed tomography (SPECT), the technique identifies the damaged heart muscle on the basis of enzymes activated by damage, followed by the targeted administration of bioengineered hydrogels for the delivery of therapeutics

Dr. Burdick says, “This research has the potential to advance treatments for the many individuals with heart attacks who have few current options. Our approach uses injectable materials and advanced imaging techniques to address the changes in protease levels after heart attacks that can lead to tissue damage.”

In other news, Dr. Burdick was one of 12 researchers named by the NIH’s Center for Engineering Complex Tissues to lead collaborative projects aimed at generating complex tissues for several parts of the body.