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News
& Ideas
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH:
Improving circulation
 Natacha
DePaola at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a team of biomedical
engineering researchers are examining how blood flow causes changes
in the circulatory system. Her research could lead to a better
understanding of how atherosclerosis develops.
DePaola, associate professor of biomedical engineering,
is working to understand the dynamics of cell behavior
and interactions at the arterial surface in early
atherosclerosis, an arterial disease that can lead to heart attacks
and strokes. The disease develops where branches or sharp curves
in the arteries create disturbed blood flows.
Studies by DePaola and her collaborators at the
Institute for Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania
have shown how disturbed blood flow disrupts communication among
the endothelial cells that line the arteries. DePaola’s research
is backed by a five-year, $1.36 million grant from the National
Institutes of Health.
“The novelty of our research approach resides
on the fact that the biological emphasis is in cell dysfunction
and that the fluid dynamics emphasis is in the complex flows found
at atherogenesis-prone sites of the human vascular system,”
DePaola says.
Her group also is tackling research related to
the breakdown in the ability of the endothelium to serve as a
barrier, vascular cell interactions, signaling mechanisms, and
the development of new biomedical instrumentation that includes
biosensors and bioreactors for the study of mammalian cell function
and the engineering of functional human tissue.
CONTACT: Theresa Bourgeois, (518) 276-2840,
bourgt@rpi.edu
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