Cardiovascular Models

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in the UK and its social and economic cost is increasing constantly due to our ageing society. Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has a longstanding commitment to world-leading research to better understand and treat heart disease. Activities include the development of innovative cardiovascular devices at the Centre for Cardiovascular Medicine and Device Innovation (CVDHub), as well as basic and translational cardiovascular research at the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI), or molecular and computational cardiovascular engineering at the School of Engineering and Materials Science

The Centre for Predictive In Vitro Models (CPM) ties in directly with these activities by focusing on advanced three dimensional vascular networks and cardiac tissues for improving understanding of disease mechanisms and development of novel treatments. Currently ongoing state-of-the art projects include bioprinted vessels-on-a-chip (Gautrot Lab), vascular disease modelling based on induced pluripotent stem cells and models for studying vascular endothelial mechanosensing (Xiao Lab, Wang Lab, Krams Lab), bio-nanoarrays to study cardiomyocyte and vascular smooth muscle cell receptor-ligand interactions (Palma Lab, Iskratsch Lab), force sensing nanopillar arrays to measure cardiomyocyte contraction dynamics, or engineered heart tissues for investigating the effects of cardiac disease causing mutations or cardiotoxicity of drugs (Iskratsch Lab, Lin Lab, Tinker Lab).

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