20.109(S10):Notebook/T/R Blue Research Proposal/2010/04/25

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 * style="background-color: #EEE"|[[Image:owwnotebook_icon.png|128px]] Pei and Leanna's Research Proposal
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Topic
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine using physiologically-relevant mechanical stimuli

(Tentative) Project Idea and Overview
Regeneration or repair of myocardial tissue by pulse vibrations using conditions previously shown to be conducive to skin wound healing.

OVERALL GOAL: We would like to find if mechanical manipulation (with exact parameter values, if we're successful) is capable of reduce natural scarring of damaged myocardial tissue so as to rescue normal function and avoid deterioration natural mechanical and electrical properties of the tissue.

Background
When left untreated, myocardial infarctions ("heart attacks") commonly cause severe damage or even death to the tissue of the myocardium. The typical human bodily response to tissue damage consists of fibroblast proliferation and scarring. While these mechanisms are effective in recovering function and overall viability, the resulting tissue does not always achieve the same level of performance as before. In many cases, scarring can be more detrimental than the original damage. (1)

Previous studies have shown improved success with repair and regeneration of vocal fold tissue, bone tissue, and even teeth accomplished through use of physiologically-relevant mechanical stimulation.(2)  Thus, our hypothesis centers around the idea that since the mechanical properties of myocardial tissue play a significant role in proper overall function, perhaps carefully designed mechanical manipulation of damaged myocardial tissue can help improve upon current methods of scar reduction in cardiac tissue healing.

As a starting point, we plan on executing ex vivo studies on myocardial porcine myocardial tissue (**this may change as we further analyze reasonable availability of resources**). We aim to combine physiologically-relevant mechanical stimuli with the presence of TGF-beta that has been shown to have a positive effect on healing (minimal scarring) of skin wounds, and shows potential for being beneficial to treatment of cardiac tissue damage. (1)