The UAB departments of Surgery and Biomedical Engineering have announced the winners of the Bioengineering-Surgery Collaborative pilot grants. A total of $70,000 in funding will be distributed among 12 surgeon-biomedical engineer partnerships for collaborative projects directed toward finding new, innovative opportunities for biomedical engineering in the field of surgery.

Dr. William Holman and Dr. Margaret Liu discuss their clinical and research interests at last year's collaborative Speed Dating event.One winning partnership, Lufang Zhou, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and William Holman, M.D., from the Department of Surgery, are collaborating on a project to address heart failure.

“Dr. Zhou had an interesting and potentially useful idea that may dramatically improve the treatment options for patients that require pacemakers,” Holman said.

“We are collaborating to develop a novel optogenetics-based pacing strategy that might be useful for the treatment of patients with advanced heart failure,” Zhou explained.

Their partnership, as well as the majority of the other grant-winning partnerships, evolved from meetings between UAB Biomedical Engineering and Surgery faculty members during last year’s first annual Speed Dating event. Last October, 35 doctors and researchers met in the West Pavilion Conference Center to discuss their clinical and research interests in the hopes of finding an avenue for a number of pilot grants created to support collaboration between surgeons and biomedical engineers.

"Most people felt that they had made a connection with at least two or three people and were planning on meeting again after the event to further solidify their collaboration," Associate Professor Timothy King said. "The joint Surgery/BME pilot project program that was announced at the meeting will provide money to allow these possible collaborations to grow into real research programs."

The following teams will receive funding for their projects as soon as April 1, 2017:

• Renata Jaskula-Sztul, Ph.D., and Margaret Liu, M.D.
  • “SSTR3 and GIPR Antibody-Drug Conjugates for Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor Therapy”
• Jillian Richter, Ph.D., and Joel Berry, Ph.D.
  • “The Glycocalyx as a Mechanoreguator of Post-Traumatic Lung Injury”
• William Holman, M.D., and Lufang Zhou, Ph.D.
  • “Optical Pacing for Advanced Heart Failure Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy”
• David Cooper, M.D., Ph.D., and Ho-Wook Jun, Ph.D.
  • “Bioengineering Hybrid Nanosack for Pancreatic Islet Transplantation in the Omentum”
• Courtney Balentine, M.D., John Porterfield, M.D., and Palaniappan Sethu, Ph.D.
  • “Tissue Engineering Parathyroid for Regenerative Medicine and Pharmacological Testing”
• Dan Chu, M.D., and Robert Hergenrother, Ph.D.
  • “Development of the Endo-Luminal (ELA) Anastomotic Stapling Device for Intestinal Surgery”
• Renata Jaskula-Sztul, Ph.D., and Joel Berry, Ph.D.
  • “Development of an Engineered Medullary Thyroid Cancer (MTC) Surrogate System as a Preclinical Model for Personalized Drug Screening”
• Adam Beck, M.D., and Prasanna Krishnamurthy, Ph.D.
  • “Electronic-Cigarette Use and the Effect on Circulating Exosomes in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease”
• Jianguo Wu, M.D., Ph.D., and Gangjian Qin, Ph.D.
  • “Leveraging Human ADSC-Derived Exosomes for Wound Healing”
• Catherine Parker, M.D., and Yuhua Song, Ph.D.
  • “Synergistic Effect of Tamoxifen and TRA-8 on ER-Positive Breast Cancer Treatment”
• Timothy King, MD, Ph.D., and Joel Berry, Ph.D.
  • “The Development of a 3-Dimensional Bioprinter for Tissue Engineering Applications”
• Jason Pittman, M.D., Ph.D., and Alan Eberhardt, Ph.D.
  • “Computational Modeling of Proximal Joint Kyphosis”