Join us on Wednesday October 28th, 2015 for our talk with
Dr. Robertson , Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh! Pizza, coffee and cookies are served.
For visitors from outside Mason – Parking is best in the Shenandoah Parking Garage ( Bldg. 43 on the campus map). The seminar is in the Krasnow Institute of Advanced Studies (Bldg. 32), Room 229:
http://info.gmu.edu/Maps/FairfaxMap14lttrClr
Bioengineering Seminar
October 28th, 2015 from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Krasnow Institute, Room 229
Speaker: Anne M. Robertson, PhD –Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science and Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh
Seminar title: The mechanobiology of the cerebral aneurysm wall: Our Current Understanding and future research directions
Biography
Anne M. Robertson is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She holds a William Kepler Whiteford Endowed Professorship in Engineering. Dr. Robertson’s research
is focused on cerebral vascular disease and mechanobiology with a particular emphasis on cerebral aneurysms. This work has been funded by the NIH, NSF, DOE and The Whitaker Foundation. She is is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal
for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering and has held visiting research professorships at universities including the Polictecnico di Milano, Italy, the Bernouilli Center at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland and RWTH University
of Aachen, Germany. Dr. Robertson is Director of the newly formed Center for Faculty Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh. This Center takes the lead in developing and implementing programs to enhance the effectiveness of junior engineering faculty
in building outstanding academic careers. She earned an MS and PhD from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at U.C. Berkeley and was a President's postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at U.C. Berkeley.
Abstract
Intracranial aneurysms (IA) are pathological enlargements of the walls of cerebral arteries, estimated to exist in approximately 5% of the adult population. Their spontaneous rupture is responsible for roughly 80% of subarachnoid hemorrhagic
strokes, a devastating disease with high mortality and disability rates. The most common treatment modalities are surgical clipping and endovascular coiling. Both remain imperfect with respect to efficacy and morbidity. The introduction of intracranial flow
diverters as an endovascular treatment was hailed as a possible resolution to many of the shortcomings of these modalities. Unexplained aneurysm ruptures after seemingly successful treatment with flow diverters have been a sobering reminder of the need for
a science based understanding of the influence of altered hemodynamics on IA structure and function.
To avoid rupture, an aneurysm must maintain its structural integrity even under extreme loading, for example during weight lifting.
Once thought to be an inert collagen matrix, the aneurysm wall is now understood to be a heterogeneous population of cell types that can aid or hinder the maintenance and repair of the collagen scaffold and hence influence disease progression towards
stabilization, growth or rupture. The nature of flow within each aneurysm is believed to play a central role in determining the wall strength through its influence on the endothelium, which in turned is believed to influence intramural cell content and function
in the aneurysm wall.
A central focus of the Robertson group is the mechanobiology of arterial walls in health and disease, with a particular focus on cerebral aneurysms. In this talk, we discuss the current state of knowledge of the relationship between hemodynamics,
wall content (cellular and extra-cellular) and wall strength in human aneurysms and in relevant animal models. This will include a discussion of walls that have successfully remodeled, contrasted with ineffective remodeling in others. An integrated understanding
of the link between hemodynamics, wall structure and wall mechanics in cerebral aneurysms is vital for improving flow altering devises such as flow diverters and developing new pharmacological approaches directed at disrupting this flow dependent degradation
process and harnessing the natural ability of the wall to maintain its structural integrity.
This multi-institutional work has been supported by the NIH- NIH/ 1R21NS080031-01A1, NIH 1R21NS088256:, NIH 2 R01 NS042646‐04 and the University of Pittsburgh ADRC Brain Bank.
Claudia Borke
Academic Program Coordinator
Volgenau School of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering
3800 Nguyen Engineering Building, 1G5
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: (703) 993-4190
Fax: (703) 993-2077