MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
Donald Gaver has served as the Biomedical Engineering Department Chair for the past eight years. His laboratory research aims to develop an understanding of the interrelationships between the mechanical and physicochemical behavior of biological systems with a primary focus on the investigations of the pulmonary system. “It is my intent to use this understanding to help, either directly or indirectly, the development of improved therapies for pulmonary disease.”
We are delighted to present you with our 2014 Tulane Biomedical Engineering Newsletter. As you will see, we are in the midst of highly positive transformational changes to our department. Of greatest importance is our addition of new research space in the J. Bennett Johnston Building on the downtown Health Sciences Campus. This adds over 7500 ft2 of spectacularly renovated research space next to the Tulane University Hospital. We’re now neighbors with the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and the Office of Technology Transfer. Our new space is in the footprint of BioDistrict New Orleans, a 1,500 acres tract that focuses on the development of a biosciences industry in New Orleans. Included are a new Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, the University Medical Center, and the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center (NOBIC). NOBIC is an excellent resource for our entrepreneurial activities and has already significantly impacted our research and teaching. This expansion provides an extraordinary opportunity for our students and faculty members by enhancing our position as a beacon of interdisciplinary health science activity at the University. This newsletter continues our tradition of highlighting People, Research and Outreach. And we feature, in a new Innovation section, three student projects that have earned national recognition and prize money. Professor Lars Gilbertson has developed an undergraduate design program that creates nationally recognized projects, and these projects are the kernel of new ventures to sustain the New Orleans economy. We also received funding from the State of Louisiana to develop an undergraduate “Grand Challenges” course through which our students will conduct research and device development as part of an integrated team. And for graduate students, our NSF-funded PhD program in Bioinnovation prepares Ph.D. graduates to be fluent at the interface of academics and industry. Many thanks to Cedric Walker for coordinating and editing this newsletter. Our website bmen.tulane.edu has more information, and we’d love to hear from you. If you come to New Orleans, please feel free to come by, otherwise, drop me a note at dpg@tulane.edu. With best wishes,
Donald Gaver Alden J. “Doc” Laborde Professor and Department Chair
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PEOPLE Professors Receive Promotion and Tenure Dr. Michael J. Moore was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure in 2013. A native of Kimball, NE, he attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln earning the B.S. in Biological Systems Engineering shortly after marrying his wife Lisa. After completing his PhD in 2005 from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and his postdoctoral training in Prof. Langer’s lab at MIT, Dr. Moore joined Tulane’s biomedical engineering faculty in 2007. Since then, Dr. Moore has exemplified success both in the laboratory and the classroom. For his work focused on developing novel methods to guide nerve growth he has received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award and NIH and DoD funding. The Senior Class selected him as a Teacher of the Year in both 2009 and 2011. Along with his wife Lisa and their three children, he also serves as the Professor-in-Residence at the Weatherhead Residential College. Dr. Walter Lee Murfee was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure in 2014. Prior to joining the Tulane faculty in 2007, he earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia. From 2005 - 2007, Prof. Murfee was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California - San Diego. The primary research interest of his laboratory is to better understand the cellular dynamics involved in adult microvascular remodeling. His work, which has been nationally recognized, serves to provide new insights for the engineering of functional vascularized tissues, and for understanding vascular dysfunction associated with multiple pathological conditions, such as hypertension, tumor growth, and wound healing. The Senior class selected him as an Alpha Eta Mu Beta 'Teacher of the Year' in 2009. Dr. Damir B. Khismatullin was awarded tenure as an Associate Professor in 2014. Damir received his B.S. and M.S. in Physics and his Ph.D. in Physics & Mathematics from Bashkir State University in Russia. Before coming to Tulane in 2008, Dr. Khismatuilin spent time as a researcher at Duke University and Boston University. The focus of his work lies in the investigation of the mechanical and transport properties of biomedical systems. Using both computational and experimental approaches, Dr. Khismatullin’s laboratory studies the interactions of blood cells and circulating tumor cells with vascular endothelium, the cavitation effects on the ablation of biological tissues, and advanced methods for rheological characterization of living cells and tissues. Clinical applications include the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases. In addition to his excellent research contributions, Dr. Khismatullin has been a leader in education and recently organized the American Society for Engineering Education – Gulf Southwest Annual Conference.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT New Venture for Serial Entrepreneur Wingeier Brett Wingeier (BSE ’96, PhD ’04) spent 12 years shepherding his design for an implantable brain stimulator all the way to FDA Pre-Market Approval. He was the Principal Biomedical Engineer for NeuroPace, which designs, manufactures and markets implantable devices for the treatment of neurological disorders by responsive brain stimulation. The initial focus was the treatment of epilepsy. During his time at NeuroPace, Brett became a US Registered Patent Agent, and was named on 16 US patents. Recently he left NeuroPace to co-found Halo Neuroscience, a startup focusing on noninvasive, electrical brain stimulation. He reports that “the perfect storm of co-founders, experienced investors, and clinical results came together this year and we're looking forward to making an impact in the field of neuromodulation.” Techcrunch.com recently reported that “Halo, a company that will produce a wearable device to ‘boost brain function’ has closed a $1.5 million round led by Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz and Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC. Halo’s press release, announcing the venture capital investment, says “Halo Neuroscience is developing wearable technology that boosts brain function. Simple to use, safe, instant effect with enduring benefit, the vision of Halo’s technology is the ability to augment the highest human faculties. The brain is already a powerful computing system, yet Halo’s neuromodulation technology has the potential to improve cognitive performance even in healthy brains.” Of New Orleans, Brett says “there’s a sense of place like few other places in the country. It feels and smells goofily poetic.” He visits frequently, drawn by the “powerful indigenous culture. San Francisco,” where he now lives, “is a culture of transplants. In New Orleans, everyone here is from here.” TULANE BME NEWSLETTER 2
PEOPLE CURRENT STUDENTS TYLER SCHLICHENMEYER Tyler Schlichenmeyer ’14 might prefer the term “polymath” to “Renaissance man,” but in his case either is an apt description. Tyler just became the first BME student to graduate with a coordinate major in the newly re-established Computer Science department. Tyler grew up as a military brat, most recently residing in Colorado Springs. He was always drawn to the medical field, but his love of physics in high school drew him toward the sciences when he was looking for universities. “I didn’t even know that Biomedical Engineering was its own field until I visited Tulane, and I knew immediately that it would be the perfect fit for me.” Tyler’s favorite classes in BME were Prof. Murfee’s Product and Experimental Design and Prof. Walker’s Embedded Controls. Tyler credits Product and Experimental Design as the class that taught him what engineering was, and what initially got him interested in a career in research. A “perfect storm of extracurricular reading”, including Beyond Boundaries by Miguel Nicolelis, helped him fine a career pursuit – neural engineering and brain-
computer interfaces. Tyler has been active in research at Tulane in the laboratory of Prof. Quincy Brown, where he has been developing instrumentation and applications software for high throughput biomedical microscopy devices, with a research article published as first author in Biomedical Optics Express. He is also
CALLIE TURLINGTON Track star Callie Turlington ’14 just graduated with honors in Biomedical Engineering, with 20 family members cheering as she crossed the most important finish line and received her diploma at commencement. A native of Clinton NC, she played soccer in middle school and ran to stay in shape. In high school she lettered all four years in cross country and twice in track at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and she’s been on the team at Tulane since Freshman year. She runs cross-country, 3km steeplechase, and was Tulane’s top performer in 5km relays. Anatomy and Physiology for Engineers has been her favorite class. Projects in Embedded Control was “pretty cool” but Biomedical Electronics was by far the hardest. Her 3.6 GPA qualified her for participation in the department’s B.S.E.-M.S program, where she’s studying the biomechanics of a shoe designed to compensate for hallux rigidus (literally means "stiff great toe") in Prof. Dancisak’s lab. After she completes her thesis and M.S. degree, Callie plans to participate in Teach for America, before a career in the medical device industry.
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doing original research for his Computer Science major on the development of rapid autofocus algorithms, with comentors Prof. Carola Wenk (Computer Science) and Prof. Brown (BME). In addition to his academic pursuits, Tyler was highly involved with the Club Baseball team, and served as its President during his sophomore and junior years. He brought the club from a 0-12 record in his freshman year to a 9-8 record and a second-place finish his junior year. “It remains one of my proudest accomplishments as an undergraduate” he says of the experience. Tyler will miss New Orleans after graduation. “As a military kid who’s lived everywhere, I can honestly say that this is the most unique place I've gotten the opportunity to live, and I've been trying to make the most of that! Whether it's crawfish boils at the Fly, jazz music downtown, just walking around uptown, or of course, Mardi Gras, there's always something to do any given weekend and I get to do it with the amazing people from all walks of life that I've met during my time at Tulane.”
PEOPLE Elaine Horn-Ranney's Path to Business Success Dr. Elaine Horn-Ranney defended her PhD dissertation in December 2013. But her story at Tulane began 10 years ago, when Elaine Horn was an incoming Freshman from Raleigh, NC. She arrived on campus knowing that her major would be biomedical engineering. Little did she know then what the city would have in store for her! During her freshman year at Tulane she lived in Butler House where, in a fateful game of pool (and a shared physics class) she met her future husband, Jesse Ranney, also a BME major. When Hurricane Katrina scattered Tulane students all over the country a year later, Elaine and Jesse retreated to Raleigh, where they both attended North Carolina State University for the semester. “We started three weeks behind and were missing a prerequisite for the electric circuits course, but NC State gave us all the books and help we needed to stay on track from that semester. It was a strange time - I was back at home living with my parents, Jesse was living in my parents' attic, and all the fun had been sucked out of our lives. In the end, we were thankful for all that
Tulane and New Orleans had to offer, and could not get back to the city fast enough once the university reopened!” As graduation time neared in 2008, Jesse was working to enter medical school, and Elaine wanted to extend her senior research thesis into a Ph.D., so they were able to stay in New Orleans. Elaine did her doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Moore, which focuses on developing in vitro models of nerve growth for drug discovery and improved wound healing therapies. Since successfully completing her doctorate, Dr. HornRanney doesn’t want “to know what it means to miss New Orleans” anytime soon. She plans to leverage the city’s surging environment for entrepreneurship and translational research in New Orleans. “Jesse, my colleague Parastoo Khoshakhlagh, and I developed a hydrogel patch for non-surgical repair of chronic perforations in the tympanic membrane (eardrum). We founded our company, Tympanogen, this January to commercialize our product, and working for the company is now my full-time job.”
INNOVATION BME Student Startup Scores $84k Tympanogen, LLC has developed “Perf-Fix,” a gel patch for the non-surgical repair of chronic eardrum perforations that occur in children's eardrums when doctors insert ventilation tubes during treatment for infections. The founders believe the gel patch will eliminate the need for surgery to repair the perforation, and could eventually be used in more than 700,000 cases per year. The four founders are Tulane Biomedical Engineers Elaine Horn-Ranney (BSE '08, PhD '13), Parastoo Khoshakhgh, MS (BME PhD candidate), Jesse Ranney, MD (BSE '08) plus LSU Health Sciences Center Otolaryngologist Kevin Taheri, MD. They’ve scored impressive wins at three different business plan competitions this year. Most recently, they placed second at the International Business Model Competition and won $12,000. The competition is hosted by Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and focuses on the lean startup method of testing assumptions about potential customers and pivoting based upon this early customer validation. Co-founders Elaine Horn-Ranney and Parastoo Khoshakhlagh presented to judges in order to advance from the 40 semi-finalist teams to the final 6 teams. The team qualified for the international competition by winning first place overall at the Tulane Business Model Competition on April 12 where they secured the top prize of $25,000. According to Tulane competition judge Chris Papamichael, a 1996 business school graduate and principal and co-founder of the Domain Cos., Tympanogen impressed him and his fellow judges both with its product and with its solid financials. “The product was very viable, they had strong margins and there was a lack of competition, whereas some of the other competitors had some stiff competition,” Papamichael said. “Tympanogen just seemed to be the most viable.”
(From L to R) Jesse Ranney, Elaine Horn Ranney, and Parastoo Khoshakhgh.
The team earned $44,000 plus an interview by FORTUNE Magazine, in the Rice Business Plan Competition, the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition. This year 500 international teams submitted, 42 teams were invited to the Business Plan Competition. Of those 42, Tympanogen was placed 5th. Derek Dashti (Bioinnovation PhD candidate and Director of Strategy for Tympanogen) helped with the presentation. The cash prize included $20,000 from the nCourage Entrepreneurs Investment Group for startups led by women, and the $20, NASA Earth/Space Human Health & Performance Innovation Cash Prize for life sciences startups with technologies relevant to the space program. TULANE BME NEWSLETTER 4
INNOVATION Biomedical Engineering Seniors Launch InVision Biomedical
Nicholas Chedid, Christopher Cover, Scott Kleinpeter, Gabriela Nunez and Seth Vignes (all BME ’13) designed a medical device as part of their senior design course, but the project didn’t stop there. The course, directed by Prof. Lars Gilbertson, guides students through the design process and culminates with the building of a working prototype. For the five students, their project has continued past graduation and earned them money and recognition. The development of EZ-View, a modified laryngeal mask airway, provides continuous ventilation for patients while maintaining visualization of the throat for physicians during surgery. In addition to Prof. Gilbertson’s guidance, the team’s mentors were Prof. Ronald Anderson, and Tulane clinicians Dr. Jaime
Left: EZ-View Diagram. Center: Team Cut-Throat, made up of 5 biomedical engineering seniors designed the EZ-View, a medical device for tracheostomy surgery. The team placed second in the Tulane Business Model Competition, earning $10,000 in start-up funds. Right: Image of the EZ-View.
Palomino and Dr. James Korndorffer (BME ’86). They call their company InVision Biomedical, and in biomedical engineering circles, they are quickly making a name for themselves. Earlier this year, they placed second in the Tulane Business Model Competition, earning $10,000 in startup funds for InVision. And this Spring, they competed in the medical technology track of the prestigious Johns Hopkins International Business Plan Competition. “The competition was quite rough,” Cover
says. “We competed against teams from Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge University, Johns Hopkins, Duke and Harvard. At the end of the day we walked away with third place and $3,000.” They also won first place at the 2012 ASAIO national design competition and subsequently were awarded state grant funding. This enabled the launch of InVision Biomedical, LLC in October 2013. Currently product testing is underway and all of the original team members remain actively involved.
BMEN Senior Design Team Builds Device for Developing World With encouragement from Prof. Lars Gilbertson, a team of Tulane undergraduate students won the second place prize at the “Beyond Borders Competition” – a national design competition held annually at Rice University. Biomedical Engineering seniors Claire Baglee, Angela Czesak, Aubrey Kraft, Jordan Vance and Joseph Young (who gave themselves the name “Team Little Gasp”) designed and built a novel low cost portable oxygen analyzer for their senior Team Design project. By the end of the year, Team Little Gasp’s project culminated with a working prototype and Team Little Gasp has now made multiple prototypes and plans on field testing in collaboration with Engineering World Health. The project was, in part, inspired by team member Angela Czesak’s summers in Tanzania and Kenya during her time at Tulane. Angela saw firsthand the needs of 5 TULANE BME NEWSLETTER
developing countries, especially in hospitals. In those hospitals, proof-of-performance for medical oxygen delivery often meant holding a lighted match in front of a stream of O2 gas. The team’s device, the Port O2, accurately measures Based on technology developed for SCUBA divers, the Port O2 accurately measures the output from oxygen concentrators. It integrates the output from an off-the-shelf oxygen sensor, microcontroller, LCD screen, three coloroxygen concentrators. coded LEDs, in a small plastic casing. Concentrators are that delivers quantitative results to the primary source of oxygen in most eliminate the guesswork by clinicians. It hospitals, but are used well beyond integrates an off-the-shelf oxygen sensor, their intended service life and there microcontroller, LCD screen, three coloris no way of determining if they are coded LEDs, in a small plastic casing. functioning properly. The Port O2 is an Prof. Quincy Brown was the team’s inexpensive, simple device, based on mentor and technical advisor. technology developed for SCUBA divers,
RESEARCH Move to JBJ Building Creates Excitement After months of planning and waiting, the day had finally arrived. Last December, the loading dock at the Lindy Boggs building was a beehive of activity, with a dozen movers loading up boxes and pieces of equipment into waiting trucks. “That one’s my scientific bread and butter.” Prof. Taby Ahsan told the moving crew. “Don’t worry, I got you covered” replied the packer as he plastic-wrapped the PCR machine into place. “It’ll meet you down there.” The destination for Prof. Ahsan and the moving trucks was the J. Bennett Johnston Health and Environmental Research Building on Tulane’s Medical Center Campus. A cluster of researchers, including faculty in the Biomedical Engineering and the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Departments, was awarded onehalf floor of research space in the building, which is attached to the Tulane School of Medicine and the Tulane University Hospital by elevated walkways. The building, called the “JBJ” by its tenants, was recently renovated with a $13.5M grant from the National Institutes of Health, to provide state-of-the-art collaborative research space to co-locate research clusters in priority areas of university-wide interest to promote interdisciplinary science. The first tenants of the renovated space were the Tulane Cancer Center, the Center for Bioinformatics and Genomics, and the Center for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine. An open competition was organized to allocate the remaining space, and the Biomedical Engineering cluster’s proposal was a winner. To promote communication and collaboration between multiple labs, the general lab space is in an open “ballroom” format, with no walls separating the lab spaces of different investigators. The open space is complemented by additional support labs that house defined shared functional spaces, such as the cell culture lab, an imaging suite, and a protein staining area. And each floor in the JBJ includes a large public space with couches, chairs, and tables that allows for discussion in a more informal comfortable setting.
The opportunity to co-locate their laboratories with clinical collaborators was an obvious “win” for several faculty members. Prof. Taby Ahsan, director of the Stem Cell Engineering Lab, previously spent much of her time traveling back and forth between the uptown and downtown campuses. “My lab will directly benefit from being in the same building as the Tulane Center for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine, which is the intellectual center of stem cell research at our university,” says Dr. Ahsan. “And being closer to the Heart and Vascular Institute and the Medical School departments will allow us to remain focused on research that helps to directly benefit clinical therapies.” Prof. Quincy Brown, director of the Translational Biophotonics Laboratory, is also moving part of his laboratory into the JBJ. “Since our research involves the development of optical cancer imaging devices which are designed to be used in the operating room and gross pathology suite, having a lab connected to the hospital is critical for us to validate our devices in the clinic,” explained Prof. Brown. “From the JBJ, we can easily conduct clinical research in the Tulane Hospital, obtain tissue specimens from the LCRC Biospecimen Core, and hold research meetings with our collaborators at the Tulane Hospital, Tulane Cancer Center, and Louisiana Cancer Research Center.” Strategically, the center “makes sense because the solution to many of the most complex and intractable problems in medicine, science and engineering will be found at the interfaces of the disciplines,” says Dr. Laura Levy, Tulane Vice President of Research. Dr. Don Gaver, Chair of BME, agrees. “Having a foothold in the downtown campus, close to the med school, the hospitals, and the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center, is a big step forward for our department. We are very excited about expanding our already strong ties with our downtown partners to conduct impactful, translational science.”
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RESEARCH Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publication Highlights Lynch KM, Ahsan T. “In vitro study of regenerative processes using cells from mouse phalangeal elements,” Tissue Eng Part A, 19(11-12):1406-1415. 2013. Epimorphic regeneration, or the recreation of a digit or limb after amputation, requires the formation of a multi-tissue structure. This depends on a complex sequence of tightly regulated spatiotemporal inputs in vivo in order to regenerate bone, cartilage, vasculature, nervous tissue, etc. In vitro studies by Dr. Ahsan’s laboratory help identify and validate specific processes in the initial establishment of a stable cell mass from which arises the tissues of the new structure. Left: The migration potential of regenerative competent cells (P3, right) is greater than that of regeneration incompetent cells (P2, left).
Horn-Ranney EL, Curley JL, Catig GC, Huval RM, Moore MJ. “Structural and molecular micropatterning of dual hydrogel constructs for neural growth models using photochemical strategies,” Biomed Microdev, 15(1):49-61. 2013. Proper mapping of the nervous system during development requires both chemical and physical guidance cues along the growth pathway. In this report, Dr. Moore’s laboratory presents a 3D in vitro tissue culture model incorporating both structural and molecular cues in a dual hydrogel system designed for studying neurite growth and guidance. This approach will be particularly useful for the study of neural growth in response to various guidance cues during development or repair. Right: Immobilization of two different fluorescent molecules in spatially distinct regions demonstrates the ability to control cues for neurite growth.
Schlichenmeyer TC, Wang M, Elfer KN, Brown JQ. "Video-rate structured illumination microscopy for high-throughput imaging of large tissue areas," Biomedical Optics Express, 5(2):366-377. 2014. Dr. Brown's group reported on the development of a microscopy system specifically designed for rapid imaging of large tissue surface areas at sub-cellular resolution, using a wide-field optical sectioning technique called structured illumination microscopy. The intended use for the device is intraoperative detection of residual cancer on fluorescently stained, excised surgical tumor specimens. The team demonstrated 26.9 Hz frame-rates for optical sectioning (and pixel sampling rates of over 130 MHz). This enabled them to demonstrate that it is feasible to obtain high-contrast, high resolution gigapixel images of thick tissue areas, such as excised tumor specimens, as large as 200 cm2 in less than 20 minutes. Left: Structured illumination microscopy enables rapid imaging of large tumor regions at sub-cellular resolution.
Chen C, Khismatullin DB. “Lipopolysaccharide induces the interactions of breast cancer and endothelial cells via activated monocytes,” Cancer Letters – 2013 (in press). The adhesion of circulating cancer cells to vascular endothelium is a key step in hematogenous metastasis. Dr. Khismatullin’s laboratory conducted static and microfluidic flow adhesion assays as well as flow cytometry to elucidate the role of circulating monocytes, bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and histamine in breast cancer cell adhesion to vascular endothelial cells. LPS-treated monocytes were shown to enhance the arrest of breast cancer cells by anchoring the cancer cells to activated endothelial cells. This anchorage was achieved by binding cancer cell ICAM-1 to monocyte ß2 integrins and binding endothelial ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 to monocyte ß1 and ß2 integrins. The results of this study imply that LPS is an important risk factor for breast cancer metastasis. Right: Images of adherent MCF-7 breast cancer cells on vascular endothelium activated by the supernatant of LPS-treated THP-1 monocytic cells and histamine under static condition.
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RESEARCH
Research in Biomedical Acoustics Dr. Damir Khismatullin, Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering is developing acoustic devices for diagnostics and therapy. The first project is an acoustic levitator. A sample of a biological material whose properties can change with time is levitated in space by acoustic radiation forces. The levitation allows noncontact and time-dependent measurements of the fluid’s rheological properties, e.g. the coagulation dynamics of whole blood. Existing methods for measuring whole blood coagulation involve stirring the blood sample inside a “pin in a cup” rheometer. A relatively large sample, in contact with the wall of the container, is needed. The new noncontact approach has the advantages of smaller sample size, more rapid and robust testing, and it may be less expensive. Work on the acoustic levitator started in July 2013 with a two-year $164,000 grant from the American Heart Association. Prototype calibration and validation were during the first year, and next year the new device will be characterized using blood samples from healthy volunteers and liver transplant patients. Prof. Khismatullin collaborates with Prof. Joseph Buell, a surgeon at Tulane Medical School and Director of the Tulane Advanced Transplant Institute, and Dr. R. Glynn Holt, a Mechanical Engineer at Boston University. The second device is the focused ultrasound system for in vitro and in vivo studies of tumor destruction by High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU), which can be used alone and in combination
with chemical ablation methods such as Percutaneous Ethanol Injection (PEI). HIFU is an upcoming technology for noninvasive or minimally invasive tumor ablation by delivery of localized acoustic energy at a focal region within the target tumor. It has been used for ablation of small volumes in vivo without damaging the surrounding region. Two main mechanisms of HIFU are acoustic absorption (resulting in tissue heating), and acoustic cavitation which creates additional heating and mechanical damage of tissue by cavitation bubbles. PEI has also been used as an ablation method for small localized tumors. When injected into the tumor, the ethanol causes dehydration of cellular cytoplasm and denaturation of cellular proteins. Using different types of cancer as well as tumor xenograft models, experiments in Prof. Khismatullin’s laboratory showed a strong synergistic effect of HIFU and PEI in tumor destruction. Synergy between HIFU and PEI is evidenced by the desired therapeutic effect with substantial reduction in the dose of both HIFU and ethanol. The combination is also found to be less sensitive to the heat sink effect that is responsible for incomplete destruction of tumor by thermal ablation methods, including HIFU alone. Research using the focused ultrasound system is funded by grants from the Louisiana Board of Regents and Tulane University Senate Committee on Research. Prof. Khismatullin’s project collaborators include Professors Joseph Buell, Emal Kandil, others from Tulane Medical School.
CAMS Receives Donation From Almar Foundation The Center for Anatomical and Movement Sciences (CAMS) gives Tulane BME students a unique approach to engineering education. Located in the basement of the Reily Center on the uptown campus, the CAMS is comprised of three units: a primary gross anatomy lab, a physiology lab and a faculty research lab. In addition to the hands-on experience of human cadaver dissection, students are also able to view and participate in surgical implantation demonstrations performed on cadavers. “We are offering an innovative approach to teaching biomedical engineering,” says Mic Dancisak, Senior Professor of Practice and the center’s director. “I don’t know of another school that gives students the opportunity to participate in these kinds of surgeries and procedures.” A recent gift from the Almar Foundation is supporting that visionary approach at CAMS by giving biomedical engineering students the opportunity to further their understanding of human anatomy. The Almar Foundation gift will allow CAMS to purchase a mini C-arm, which converts x-rays into visible images and allows surgeons to easily visualize their procedures. This capability is especially important for surgeons learning to
place new medical devices, because it gives doctors a beforeand-after image that verifies that the medical device is positioned correctly. The addition of the C-arm also makes renting lab space from the center more attractive for industry partners. To bring more learning opportunities to students, Dancisak has been working closely with industry partners. These partners lease lab space from the center to demonstrate procedures to physiciancustomers using new implantable medical devices. Tulane BME students have a chance to participate in these procedures with these industry partners and surgeons. “Interfacing with these industry representatives is a huge value for our students,” says Dancisak. “These networking opportunities can help students with internship and job opportunities.” “I have been grateful to Tulane since I graduated in 1969 with a BS in Engineering,” says Dr. Monroe Laborde (E ’69, M ’73), Almar Foundation representative. “Biomedical engineering had not started yet as a department but an engineering curriculum major allowed me time to do pre-med courses. I have been happy to help the Biomedical Engineering Department at Tulane since they gave me such a good education.” TULANE BME NEWSLETTER 8
OUTREACH BME Staff, Students, and Faculty Help Make First Lego League a Success First Lego League is a co-curricular robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds, designed to get children excited about science and technology -- and teach them valuable employment and life skills. To an observer, the annual competitions look like a mix of kids, engineering, and controlled chaos. This year, again, biomedical engineering staff members, students, and faculty all volunteered as judges and aides at the local First Lego League completion. This one day event highlights the best parts of engineering – the genuine excitement in hard work paying off. Each competition has multiple parts including the robot design, the robot game, and a research project. This year the theme of the challenge was “Nature’s Fury.” Motivated by natural disasters, local elementary and middle school students identified problems in the community that were caused by nature. Then over months the students worked in teams to design a solution to fix their problem. Each team also designed a Lego-robot to carry out specific missions on a raised playing field
the size of a large table. The highlight of competition day was the match-play, during which teams faced off against each. The goal of the robot game was to collect as many points as possible in a two and a half minute time interval. This year points were gained by the robots completing missions, like moving miniature tree branches, lifting model houses, and delivering supplies. “The best part of the day is seeing the kids learn why they are having fun,” says Lorrie McGinley, a staff member in the department, has been volunteering since the biomedical engineering department’s involvement. Lorrie and the rest of the volunteers from Tulane’s biomedical engineering department were score keepers, judges, and even team mentors. First Lego league gets children excited about science and technology. The energy on competition day is contagious and in turn inspires everyone involved. The volunteers walked away in amazement of how much the teams accomplished and satisfaction that they played a small part in help making the day happen.
A First Lego League team in action with their robot on competition day.
Lego League robot ready to compete.
“Baby Ben” Franklin Students Teamed with Tulane BME Last December, a group of students from the Benjamin Franklin Elementary Mathematics and Science School visited the BME faculty research laboratories. The students, part of Ms. Mi Wha Morrison-Fontenot’s gifted class, were also participants in their school’s Science Fair. Students saw animated results from computer modeling of lung airway reopening in Prof. Don Gaver’s laboratory; harvesting and culture of cortical neurites in Prof. Michael Moore’s neural engineering lab; observed rodent surgeries and learned how new blood vessels grow in Prof. Lee Murfee’s laboratory; and learned about how light can help surgeons better remove tumors and observed new optical microscopy tools for pathology in Prof. Quincy Brown’s lab. The connection between Tulane BME and Benjamin Franklin Elementary Extension began several years ago with a Tulane service learning class associated with the Sophomore Product and Experimental Design class. The service learning component was pioneered by Prof. Annette Oertling, and is now directed by Profs. Quincy Brown and Lee Murfee. As part of this class, Tulane BME students are partnered with local K-12 schools to assist their students in developing and executing Science Fair projects. Students at the partner schools benefit from the mentorship and experiences of the more experienced Tulane peers. The benefit to the Tulane students is clear, as mentoring the Science Fair students throughout their design and experimental process reinforces the concepts that they are applying in their own team design projects in Product and Experimental Design. 9 TULANE BME NEWSLETTER
Students from Benjamin Franklin Elementary Mathematics and Science School tour a BME lab.
Which brings us back to the Benjamin Franklin students – most of them had spent the semester interacting with Tulane student mentors at their school. The tours of the Tulane labs provided them an opportunity to see what kind of research is conducted at the University level, and to continue to strengthen their interest in science and engineering. “Many of our students still need to be sold on the idea that STEM education is cool,” says Ms. MorrisonFontenot. “The lab tours were fun and interesting, and the kids talked about it all the way back to school!”
OUTREACH Biomedical Engineering Help for Musicians Lifelong New Orleans resident and music legend Deacon John joined the list of volunteers who agreed to participate in a study investigating the effects of muscle cooling to minimize fatigue and tremor in older musicians. Deacon John is currently the president of the local musicians union (American Federation of Musicians, Local 174-496) in addition to performing regularly. Deacon is working with Prof. Mic Dancisak and Tulane Center for Aging doctoral student Lauren Jensen to develop a new fatigue-relieving garment to wear during performances. Prof. Dancisak’s team is already well known for their studies quantifying the delay in the time it takes to reach a state of functional muscle fatigue. The team first worked with women volleyball players and male baseball pitchers to determine how temperature control affected the athletes’ performances. In between sets and innings, the players wore the sleeve to cool down and then warm up muscles. “We noticed that there was about a 30 percent increase in maintenance of power with the volleyball players when they used the sleeves,” says Dancisak. “With the pitchers, we simply looked at pitching speed. Without the sleeve, their fastball declined. “But when they wore the sleeve in between innings, they were able to maintain their fastball speed through all seven innings. One of the pitchers actually increased his speed.”
FACULTY NEWS
Research Updates • Honors & Awards • Innovative Projects
Damir Khismatullin, with Chong Chen published a paper in Cancer Letters demonstrating that endotoxinactivated circulating monocytes increase a risk of breast cancer metastasis by anchoring circulating cancer cells to vascular endothelium.
Doug Chrisey’s lab in the medical school is up and going with research projects ranging from cell-based biological warfare detection to CAD/CAM controlled laser forward transfer fabrication of engineered tissue constructs on a cell-by-cell level using pattern recognition.
Lars Gilbertson participated in “Fast 48 II”--a 48-hour boot camp in design thinking for social innovation at Propeller Incubator http://gopropeller. org/ in New Orleans.
Ron C. Anderson chaired a session on Imaging Bone at the 2013 Combined Orthopedic Research Society Meeting, Venice, 2013.
San Aung was promoted to Senior Professor of Practice in July 2013.
Mic Dancisak and Tulane Center for Aging doctoral student Lauren Jensen are developing a new fatiguerelieving garment that musicians can wear during performances.
Taby Ahsan’s Lab has moved to the Tulane School of Medicine campus to develop more dynamic and productive scientific relationships with basic science researchers and clinicians.
Lee Murfee, was invited to share his research on the cellular dynamics involved in blood and lympahtic vessel growth at upcoming scientific meetings in San Diego, Boston, and Iguassu Falls, Brazil.
Michael Moore’s laboratory received a $10,000 grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents for the development of “Digital projection lithography of orthogonal photogels for micropatterned neural culture systems.”
Yu-Ping Wang was invited to join the editorial board of The Journal of Neuroscience Methods, which publishes papers that describe new methods for neuroscience research with an impact factor of 2.114.
Quincy Brown gave an invited presentation at the European Conference on Biomedical Optics Conference (ECBO) in Munich Germany, entitled “Towards high throughput fluorescence microscopy for intra-operative tumor margin assessment.” Dr. Brown will serve as Conference Co-Chair, Clinical Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging Track, for the next ECBO meeting in 2015. Research Professor Eiichiro Yamaguchi, recent graduates Matt Van Houten and Matt Giannetti and co-authors used microfabrication and microparticle image velocimetry to assess the unusual dynamic stability of interfacial flows with pulmonary surfactant. This was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Donald Gaver's Biofluid Mechanics laboratory described novel highperformance computing approaches to evaluate transport properties in complex microfluidic geometries in the SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing. Co-authors included Kate Hamlington (a recent PhD grad from the lab), Ricardo Cortez (Math) and Hideki Fujioka (CCS). Cedric Walker coordinated the site visits for 24 programs seeking new or renewed accreditation from ABET. He reports that there are now nearly 100 accredited programs in Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering.
TULANE BME NEWSLETTER 10
Department of Biomedical Engineering Lindy Boggs Center Suite 500 New Orleans, LA 70118
PEOPLE INNOVATION RESEARCH OUTREACH
LinkedIn UPDATE There are now more than 530 Tulane BME alumni, students, and faculty members in the “Tulane Biomedical Engineering Students and Alumni” group on LinkedIn.com. If you’re already a member of LinkedIn, it’s easy to join. Just type “Tulane Biomedical” in the “Groups” search box at the top of the LinkedIn home page.
Keep Up With The Latest News The BMEN web site is frequently updated with news about our students and research. Get the latest updates at http://tulane.edu/sse/bme/newsandevents/. One of the ranking metrics used by Google and other search engines is “popularity” as measured by the number of referring web sites. If you control a personal or business web page, please consider adding a link to your alma mater: http://tulane.edu/sse/bme/.