biomedical engineering – The Cornell Daily Sun Independent Since 1880 Fri, 25 Sep 2020 19:09:06 +0000 en-US hourly 1 biomedical engineering – The Cornell Daily Sun 32 32 Bringing Mechanical Engineering to Biology; The Story of Cornell BME’s Newest Professor Fri, 25 Sep 2020 14:41:45 +0000 Karl Lewis, who joined Cornell’s biomedical engineering faculty in July 2020,  epitomizes Cornell Engineering’s motto “break the rules.”. Though a typical engineer may specialize in just one area, Lewis’s career has driven him to bridge gaps between two historically isolated specialties: biology and mechanics.

As an undergraduate studying mechanical engineering, Lewis was interested in anything with an engine —   his friends described him as a “gearhead.” But Lewis also found that within the realm of mechanical engineering, the number of unasked questions seemed limited compared to those in biology.

Lewis soon joined a biomedical engineering lab with a group that studied the different properties — like toughness and elasticity — of cartilage, a cushiony connective tissue that coats bones and joints, and offsets weight loading. Cartilage may degrade with mechanical stress or age, leading to problems down the road such as osteoarthritis, and Lewis’s work looked at cartilage characteristics as they degraded.

“It was an opportunity to use the analytics and material understanding from my mechanical engineering to look at and interrogate a biological question,” Lewis said.

Fascinated by the concept of using mechanical tools to study biological phenomena, Lewis continued on as a Ph.D. student in the biomedical engineering department at the City College of New York. There, he worked with a diverse group of people that each came from a different specialization, with input from physiologists, nutritionists and cell biologists.

Together, they studied calcium signaling in bone cells, called osteocytes. As the most common cell in bone tissue, with over 40 billion of them in the human body, osteocytes are connected to each other and exchange nutrients within the bony matrix. Bones store the body’s calcium reserves, and when overall calcium levels are low, osteocytes break down bone to obtain more calcium for the body so it can properly mobilize muscles and nerves. Osteocytes also signal to each other using calcium in response to a mechanical load, which was what Lewis’s work focused on.

“It didn’t have to be that everyone was a cell biologist in order to study osteocytes,” Lewis said. “As a mechanical engineer, I brought a unique perspective to the way that those cells work, and working with someone that understood cell biology meant that we could really do something exciting.”

With this group, Lewis built a mechanical loading device in-vivo — inside a living organism — to study calcium signaling in response to mechanical stimuli. Continuing on as a postdoctoral researcher at Indiana University School of Medicine, Lewis’s aim was to create genetically modified mice to further develop ways to study bones.

“If I was going to be a professor, I wanted to be able to study bone cells from in-vitro cell models all the way up through organ models, looking at specific bones under loading, to full systemic models, looking at longitudinal studies of genetically modified mice,” Lewis said.

As a professor, Lewis views his work as a continuation of his past lab experience, reinforcing the concept that mechanical cues are inherently biological. As Lewis explained, cells are constantly subject to mechanical input. Cardiac cells pumping blood, for instance, receive electrical signals that stimulate contraction. Cells also contain proteins that sense mechanical loading — the contraction in this case — and turn the signal into a biological one.

“We typically separate mechanical force from biology, and look at them as different. But mechanical cues are in fact the same as biological cues,” Lewis said.

Embracing this mantra, Lewis and some of his friends from graduate school in New York recognized this discrepancy between Harlem students and engagement in STEM subjects, and formed a community outreach association with the Harlem Children’s Zone, a charter school.The goal was to make STEM accessible by leading science projects with high school juniors and seniors.

“We’d go in wearing normal clothing…and we were going in explicitly as scientists to show these students that it was accessible,” Lewis said.

This experience sparked Lewis’s initial interest in Cornell. Through his community outreach he had the chance to connect with Cornell faculty and took an interest in the University’s “any person, any study” motto, appreciating the “commitment to student curiosity.”

Lewis said he strongly believes in the importance of teaching and remaining mindful of the inequalities that may prevent some from receiving a good education, something he felt that Cornell students are particularly attentive to.

“I feel like it’s a responsibility of mine to give back to the community with the gifts that I’ve been given through education,” he said.

Though he won’t teach until next semester, Lewis has spent his first weeks in Ithaca exploring the natural beauty through running and hiking. As a certified yoga instructor, he is also excited to continue his practice in Ithaca.

]]> 0
Group of Cornell Undergraduates Design New Medical Mask for the Era of a Pandemic Tue, 12 May 2020 04:34:56 +0000 One of the many shortages that has taken hold during the pandemic is one of personal protective equipment — items used to protect individuals from being exposed to a virus.

A group of Cornell undergraduates is trying to stem that shortage with their new design for a mask, which is tailored for the COVID-19 outbreak.

The team, many of whom initially competed and won the seventh annual New York City Health Hackathon hosted by Weill Cornell Medical College, designed a smart mask called “Vital Mask” to be specifically used in emergency rooms. Since the pandemic exacerbates staff shortages and timely patient treatment, proper protection in emergency rooms is vital.

A month-and-a-half after competing in the hackathon several of the members of the team founded Vita Innovations so that they could commercialize their design. The Cornell team drew from current healthcare demands and opinions from physicians and other healthcare experts to bring together their prize-winning design, a smart mask called “Vital Mask.”

Oscar Liu ’21, CEO of Vita Innovations and a member of the New York City team, explained the several key design components that they considered during the hackathon. Since N95 masks can cause difficulty in breathing for some patients due to the tight fit and filter, the team sought to make more breathable masks.

Additionally, the Food and Drug Administration does not recommend these masks for patients with breathing problems and these masks are primarily meant for medical professionals.

“This was the first thing we looked in to,” Liu said. “Breathability should be key for a COVID patient.”

Another feature the team aims to improve upon is the material of the masks. The students are researching more options for mask material, as well as ways to make the masks reusable to combat mask shortages.

What made their mask truly stand out was the consideration of another pressing healthcare issue: emergency room wait times. According to a nationwide evaluation conducted by a nonprofit newsroom last fall, average ER wait times can range from two to over five hours depending on the state —  some patients end up getting sent home without ever being admitted.

The mask protects patients in crowded waiting rooms from possible cross infections. When many patients are seeking treatment for infectious diseases they enter alongside those with chronic and underlying conditions, so the students wanted to lessen the risk of visiting the hospital.

“A lot of people who go into the hospital risk coming out worse than [they] came in because of transmission rates,” said Rishi Singhal ’21. “Going to the hospital should not be a risk.”

The masks monitor breathing rate, beats per minute, oxygen saturation and temperature — the signs Weill Cornell Medicine uses to diagnose and monitor COVID-19. Then, the information these masks collect is sent to a computer, allowing for medical staff to monitor patients from afar rather than having to see each individual patient.

“[The mask] interfaces would be used by physicians in medical clinics, ambulances, basically any care setting.” said Ray Wei ’22, who is working on developing a desktop application for displaying vital signs.

The software team also wants to include more visualizations and analytical data on patient conditions, and are even looking into consolidating patient records.

“After this is fully implemented, we also want a mobile app for patients so they can have a simple interface for their own use,” added team member Daniel Stabile ’21.

Vita Innovations has been conducting outreach to obtain feedback straight from front line workers, primarily reaching out to emergency medicine clinicians. They found that the top concerns for those in the emergency room is safety, accuracy, cost, and comfort into their product.

Although the team prioritizes the desktop app, it also wants to develop the mobile app in response to feedback from the patient population during its outreach. Patient autonomy is a growing trend that allows individuals to make informed decisions about their own health care.

Julia Isakov ’21, the startup’s new financial manager, described one of the ways the startup is so unique.

“Although we have all had internships and research positions, we haven’t worked in industry. We see things from an outside perspective, and we see what can be changed,” Isakov said.

Despite the challenges of remote work and funding, the team has met consistently to continue their work fighting the current pandemic as well as longstanding healthcare issues, hoping to make a meaningful impact.

“Even if we are students, and there is a lot that goes into medical device approval and regulation and navigating markets — we see a medical need, and we have an opportunity with this team of eight to make a tangible impact.”

]]> 1
New Frontier in Nucleus Capabilities Tue, 18 Sep 2018 03:40:40 +0000 From middle school biology we were always taught that the nucleus is the “control center” of the cell, similar to how the brain is the control center of our own bodies. At first glance this makes a lot of sense, considering the nucleus contains DNA — the genetic code of life — and a good amount of the machinery that is required to transcribe this code into the proteins that make up our being. Despite this seemingly intuitive role of the nucleus, a recent study conducted by the Prof. Jan Lammerding, biomedical engineering, and post-doctoral fellow Tyler Kirby, suggests the nucleus may also act as a “mechano-sensor” in the cell. A mechano-sensor is a component of the cell that responds to physical stimuli in the environment of the cell, such as touch, charge, or temperature. Previously the role of mechano-sensor was credited entirely to cell membrane proteins.

The study conducted by Lammerding and Kirby focused on Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy — a disease that affects one in every 3,500 males and causes weakness in the shoulders, upper arms, and lower legs. More specifically the pair studied the LMNA gene which encodes two proteins that make up the nucleus: nuclear lamins A and C. A mutation in the LMNA gene will cause dysfunction of the lamin A-C proteins.

“Lamin A-C proteins are a primary determinant of … structure, or the rigidity and mechanical properties of the nucleus. If you lack those proteins it makes the nucleus very soft, which in turn affects how it can respond to mechanical forces,” Kirby said.

Lammerding and Kirby investigated why, despite all of the cells in a body possessing a mutated LMNA gene, only skeletal and cardiac muscle cells displayed extensive signs of nuclear damage, thus expressing the disease’s observable traits. Their current hypothesis is that muscle cells are only affected because of the constant mechanical stress that they are put under every time you move your body.

How were researchers able to deduce that the nucleus was doing the sensing? “The way that people are now approaching it is to specifically disrupt the way that the nucleus is connected to the rest of the cell,” Kirby said. There are two methods that researchers are currently using. The first involves “Link” complexes, which transmit stimuli from the cytoskeleton — the outer supportive framework of each cell — to the nucleus.

According to Kirby, other groups have “genetically manipulated” cells so they no longer have the Link complex. Afterwards they tested if this affected functions in the nucleus. Kirby said that there is emerging evidence that suggests altering Link complexes does in fact affect nucleus function.

The second method mentioned by Kirby was to remove the nucleus from the rest of the cell and observe physical changes in the nucleus when force was applied.

Dr. Lammerding is optimistic about continued research on the nucleus as a mechano-sensor in cells. If further research supports the lab’s hypothesis, it could potentially change the way we conduct cell stimuli research.

As it pertains to the healthcare field, taking the nucleus into account when seeking to cure illnesses, might “open the door for novel therapeutic approaches for treating Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy and other currently untreatable diseases.” Lammerding said.

]]> 0