Marquette University is a member of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
Dr. Brandon J. Tefft, assistant professor in the Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award with an anticipated value of $572,770 to produce a growing heart valve that can reduce the need for repeat surgery for individuals with congenital heart valve defects.
The goal of this project, “CAREER: Origami-inspired design for a tissue engineered heart valve,” will be to address valve durability obstacles present in current valve replacement options. This approach will engineer a degradable scaffold for generating living heart valve replacements based on an origami-inspired design. Tefft will then populate the scaffold using cells derived from host umbilical cord blood, which can be engineered to develop into the types of cells normally found in human heart valves.
“Children born with congenital heart defects often require repeat valve replacement over a lifetime, as the original valve replacement does not grow over time with the size of the heart of its host,” Tefft said. “Our aim with this award is to use a novel origami-inspired approach to engineer a degradable scaffold for generating living heart valve replacements. We hope to produce a growing heart valve solution superior to current prostheses in structure and function, thereby reducing the need for repeat surgery as the patient grows.”
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