The fifth annual NIH Cardiovascular Bioengineering (CVBE) Symposium was held in Sydney, Australia on March 1-2, 2019. The symposium continues to be unique in the world, featuring a combination of top international researchers and trainees in cardiovascular bioengineering.

The event was an international collaboration, co-hosted and co-organized by the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering Chair Jay Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., and James Chong, Ph.D., of the University of Sydney. The symposium was funded by grants from the U01 NIH NHLBI Progenitor Cell Translational Consortium (NIH PCTC) ACC and an NIH R13 grant awarded to UAB’s Zhang and Joel Berry, Ph.D., by the NHLBI specifically to support the CVBE 2019 Symposium.

The symposium provided a forum for trainees and junior investigators to present their work in the areas of gene editing, induced pluripotent stem cells, and cardiac stem cells in the context of heart failure, as well as general topics in cardiovascular bioengineering.

Additional topics included vascular tissue engineering, cardiac development, exosomes, microRNAs, and mitochondria. Cardiac gene and cardiac cell therapy were center stage. Nearly 200 people attended the conference, which was supported by speakers from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia’s cardiovascular bioengineering communities.

Planning is already in motion for the 2020 CVBE Symposium, to be held in Goettingen, Germany.

Videos from the 2019 symposium presentations may be viewed on YouTube. Some presentations are excluded at the presenters' request. Click here to view 2019 CVBE Symposium videos