Functional Assessment of Cardiomyocytes Derived from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells
Speaker Details:
Nate Sniadecki
UW / Department of Mechanical Engineering
Lecture Details:
January 31, 2019
12:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, PhD
Abstract:
“Human pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) are an appropriate and
versatile cell type to study cardiac development and heart disease. The use of hiPSC-CMs has
required the development of platforms and protocols to study their structure-function. Single cell
studies of hiPSC-CMs can be performed with arrays of flexible microposts to measure the
contraction force while also monitoring the calcium transients. The structure-function of hiPSC-
CMs can also be studied within engineered heart tissue, which are three-dimensional tissue
constructs that more closely mimic the microenvironment of the native myocardium. With these
functional platforms, it is possible to study human disease in the dish with patient-derived
cardiomyocytes or gene-edited cells that recapture the phenotype of a disease. This talk will
highlight the studies that have been conducted on maturation protocols for hiPSC-CMs,
modeling cardiomyopathy and muscular dystrophy in the dish, and a magnetic-based platform
for monitoring engineered heart tissue performance in real-time.”
Speaker Bio:
“Prof. Sniadecki is an expert in cell mechanics and the use of engineering and nanotechnology
for understanding the mechanobiology of cells. Prof. Sniadecki received his B.S. in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from
the University of Maryland with Prof. Don DeVoe. He was a NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow in
Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a Hartwell Fellow at the University of
Pennsylvania in Bioengineering with Prof. Chris Chen. He has been at University of Washington
since 2007 and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, DARPA Young Faculty Award,
UW Kobayashi Professorship, and ASME Lloyd Hamilton Donnell Award.”