From the Right Heart to the Pulmonary Arteries: A Multi-Scale Approach to Understanding Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
Speaker
Daniela Valdez-Jasso, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Bioengineering
University of California, San Diego
Abstract
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rapidly progressive vasculopathy that commonly results in intractable right-heart failure and premature death. Transplantation of the lung remains the only cure, suggesting our limited understanding of the pathophysiology. Here I present recent results from my research laboratory using a rat animal model of PAH. A multiscale approach is used to elucidate the organ- (hemodynamic), tissue- (structural and mechanical), and cellular (molecular) response of the pressure-overloaded right ventricle, the dynamic vascular remodeling process in PAH and their ventriculo-vascular interaction. Experimental findings are incorporated into mechanistic mathematical models for testable quantitative formulations of organ and tissue function. We will discuss how our experimental data measured at different scales are implemented in the computational models to determine underlying mechanisms governing PAH, and how the models are interrogated to determine their prediction capabilities and infer on data and model uncertainty.
Bio
Dr. Valdez-Jasso received her Undergraduate and Masters degrees in Applied Mathematics, and her doctoral degree in Biomathematics, all from the Department of Mathematics at North Carolina State University. Her graduate thesis, which was recognized for its excellence with a Lucas Research Award, focused on modeling approaches to understanding the dynamic pressure-area relationship of systemic arteries. During her postdoctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where she was an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellow, a member of the Vascular Medicine Institute, and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, she investigated the tissue structure and biomechanics of the normal and pressure-overloaded right ventricle. As an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Dr. Valdez-Jasso established her research laboratory in soft-tissue biomechanics and in multi-scale mathematical modeling of tissue function, particularly as they pertain to understanding the vascular and right-ventricular adaptations to pulmonary hypertension. An American Heart Association Scientist Development Grant supported her work. She has been an active Faculty mentor of the Minority Engineering Recruitment and Retention Program in the College of Engineering at UIC and is the vice-chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering Bioengineering Division. She is currently a faculty member of the Bioengineering Department at the University of California San Diego, where she has been developing systems biology models of the cell signaling networks in cardiac and vascular muscle cells and fibroblasts subjected to altered mechanical strain and substrates.
