Interdisciplinary heart tissue research earns $1.5 million NSF award

For Auburn professors Elizabeth Lipke, the Mary and John H. Sanders Professor of chemical engineering, and Selen Cremaschi, the B. Redd and Susan W. Redd Endowed Eminent Scholar Chair Professor of chemical engineering, engineering is at the heart of what they do.

The duo has brought together a multidiscplinary, multi-institutional team to apply engineering and development biology knowledge and toolsets to advance heart cell production. The National Science Foundation recently awarded $1.5 million, of which $924,660 is directed to Auburn Engineering, for the project “RECODE: Directing and Controlling Cardiac Differentiation Through Cellular and Microenvironmental Manipulation and Application of Machine-Learning.” The project is a collaboration between three universities-Auburn University, Stanford University and Alabama State University.

The goal of the project is to improve the ability to produce heart cells, specifically heart cells called cardiomyocytes, which are the contracting heart cells that do the work of pumping blood throughout the body. Over one billion of these cells die during a heart attack and are unable to regenerate; being able to produce them efficiently is critical to understanding and repairing the heart.

Find the full story here: https://eng.auburn.edu/news/2022/04/nsf-heart-tissue-research.html