Kayla Henderson, a graduate student working in the lab of Professor Aaron Baker, recently authored a review paper in Advanced Healthcare Materials.
Kayla Henderson is a third year graduate student working in Professor Aaron Baker's lab.
The paper titled Biomechanical Regulation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering, examines role of mechanical forces in enhancing cell-based therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.
The paper discusses the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for tissue engineering purposes. MSCs are multipotent stem cells that can be differentiated into a variety of different type of cells: bone cells, cartilage cells, fat cells, or muscle cells.
More recently, researchers have found they can also be differentiated into cardiovascular cells. The Baker lab is interested harnessing the power of biomechanical forces to enhance the differentiation of MSCs in cells of the cardiovascular system, which could open up new opportunities to enhance healing in patients with damaged heart tissue or blood vessels.
Until recently much of the research has focused on using biochemical treatments to control differentiation of these cells. Researchers have focused on determining which growth factors, small molecules, or types of drugs might affect cell differentiation. While this is important, growing cells in a static structure does not always give researchers a realistic view of how these cells will behave inside the human body.
In her project, Henderson is working to realistically replicate the biomechanical forces that occur in the body to see how these impact stem cell phenotype and cardiovascular function.
Her next steps are to build on the previous research done in this area and continue working with applied mechanical force to see how that principle affects MSCs differentiation.
