On Januari 17th, Laura Windt successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “Tissue Engineered Models of the Human Heart”.
Her research describes the tissue engineering of a human cardiac 3D model that is physiologically relevant and qualified to measure contractile force. The general aim of her work was to make EHTs from the main cell types of the human heart, differentiated from hiPSCs to cardiomyocytes, cardiac fibroblasts and cardiac endothelial cells. Miniaturized EHTs of three different sizes using lower input cell numbers than conventional EHTs were compared and characterized for the main cardiac output: contractile force. Reproducibility and robustness of contraction kinetics output were improved by trapping the tissues in a fixed position in the middle of tapered angled pillars. In this improved model, automated screening of live EHTs with fluorescent reporter cells was performed to study the effect of cardiac cell distribution on contractile force. Additionally, the miniaturized EHT model was used to study the effect of TGF-β: a main driver of cardiac fibrosis.
Laura’s research was performed at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) in the laboratory of Prof. Christine Mummery and co-supervised by Dr. Ir. Berend van Meer. In addition, she was part of the Netherlands Organ-on-Chip Initiative (NOCI). The aim of this interdisciplinary endeavour is to pioneer innovative methodologies for creating sophisticated human organ systems within OoC devices, with a focus on modelling cardiovascular, brain, and gastrointestinal (patho)physiology. This initiative engages bio-medical engineers and biological researchers from six prominent universities in the Netherlands (LUMC, TU Delft, UT, UMC Utrecht Hubrecht, UMCG and Erasmus MC), fostering active collaboration to drive the development of novel applications tailored to diverse organ systems.
