Kerry Lane: Engineered Platforms to Investigate Effects of Cell-Cell and 3D Adhesions on hiPSC-CM Maturity
SEMINAR (Zoom)
This UC Next Seminar will be hosted online via Zoom. RSVP to receive the zoom link by emailing info@bioengineering.ucsb.edu.
Zoom will open after the host has joined at the start of each seminar. You can ask questions through the chat forum and by raising your "hand" and the speaker will call on you.
Speaker
Kerry Lane
9:25 am via ZOOM
Title: Engineered Platforms to Investigate Effects of Cell-Cell and 3D Adhesions on hiPSC-CM Maturity
Abstract
Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the world, yet we still don’t understand the most basic processes of cell dysfunction or cell death due to disease. Better cell models and more research are needed to study how structure and function are related in health and disease, how disease progresses, and to test potential treatments. Specifically, heart muscle cells or cardiomyocytes (CMs) underlie the mechanical pumping function of the heart. Due to the scarcity of primary human heart tissue and the inability to maintain adult human CMs in culture, most of what we know about CM physiology comes from animal models. Murine models are especially popular for their tractable genetics, accelerated development and disease timeline, lower costs, and modest viability of CMs isolated from neonatal hearts. However, essential differences between murine and human heart physiology have limited the translatability of these models. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) offer the potential to engineer human CMs in vivo, however these models have been limited by the immature, disordered structure and function. Thus, goals of the proposed work are to improve existing hiPSC-CM cell level models, to study the role of N-cadherin in coordinating myofibrillogenesis and the role of cell-cell communication through N-cadherin in disease processes.
BIO
Kerry Lane is currently a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara working with Professor Beth Pruitt. Her graduate work focuses on engineering platforms for stem cell-derived heart muscle cells. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Seattle University and her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara. Kerry has received multiple awards and honors, including an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a UCSB Chancellor's Fellowship, induction into the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and the Seattle University College of Science and Engineering McNulty Award. Kerry is dedicated to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM through mentoring, organizing, and teaching, most recently in the inclusivity-focused pedagogy she implemented when teaching a core Mechanical Engineering course at UC Santa Barbara.
