Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biology

Department

Biology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Bournias-Vardiabasis, Nicole

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality across the world with invasive surgeries and pharmaceutical intervention commonly associated with urgent care. Moreover, congenital, progressive, and hereditary heart diseases rely on many forms of medical prevention and intervention (pharmaceuticals, x-rays, bloodwork, etc.). Developing a three-dimensional (3D) cardiac tissue engineered in vitro model to study human cardiac physiology can revolutionize biomedical research. The purpose of this research is to optimize natural & synthetic biomaterials to fuse cardiac stem cells and synthesize a 3D-printed in vitro model for disease modeling, drug delivery, and regenerative medicine. Natural biopolymers needed for such innovations are extracted from numerous sources such as fish and porcine, namely, gelatin methacrylol (GelMA). GelMA has been shown to demonstrate excellent cytocompatibility. The cytocompatibility can be further improved with choline-based bio-ionic liquids (BILs) to make the biopolymer (“BioGel”) suitable for culturing sensitive cells. The overall aim of this project is to optimize the composition of fish BioGel to provide a mechanically as well as biologically conducive environment for culturing of human induced pluripotent stem cells derived cardiac fibroblasts (hiPSC-CF). Development of a fish BioGel based system for culturing hiPSC-derived cardiac cells would facilitate the fabrication of 3D bio-printable cardiac constructs as a step towards the realization of a physiologically relevant in vitro model of cardiac tissue for a myriad of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering applications.

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