PhD in Bioreactor-based preservation of human heart valves

• Are you fascinated by the potential of maintaining heart valves outside of the human body?
• Are you eager to contribute to better and sustainable healthcare at the interface of engineering and biology?
• Are you passionate about inspiring and mentoring students and working in a high-end collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment?
• Are you our next PhD candidate in bioreactor-based preservation of human heart valves?

Information
The Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is seeking a highly talented, ambitious and passionate PhD candidate to investigate and further develop our model of heart valve preservation. We aim to develop a way to keep heart valves alive outside of the human body using dynamic bioreactors where the valves open and close as they do in the human body. As the successful candidate, your research with us will contribute to broader efforts to culture living cardiac tissues and to study their function and their response to immune cells and immune protective technology, closely aligned with our BIOSHIELD consortium funded by the Dutch Heart Foundation. Our group’s research concentrates on developing and improving heart valve replacements in young children born with congenital heart disease. The current valve replacement options available in clinical practice cannot adapt to the growing heart of a child and can elicit immune responses that destroy and calcify implanted valves. Therefore, these young patients require multiple invasive operations throughout their lives. We investigate how to develop a living valve that can grow with the heart and is safe from immune rejection. Alongside our advances in in-situ tissue engineering of heart valves, we investigate strategies for immune shielding and culture of living human donor heart valves as an alternative approach. An essential step in moving this approach forward is to maintain and preserve heart valves outside the human body. In this project, we will focus on extended culture and preservation of donor valves, unravelling valve homeostatic maintenance, and translating this knowledge into smart culture conditions and bioreactor designs with feedback options. This presents an exciting engineering challenge: designing systems that can reproduce the complex flow conditions, pressures, and mechanical stimuli experienced by heart valves in the human body. By combining mechanical design, fluid dynamics, and biomedical engineering, we aim to develop innovative bioreactor technologies.

You will generate unprecedented experimental data as a pioneer in the field to unravel the conditions for optimal ex vivo cardiovascular tissue preservation. Your investigations will build upon our track record on bioreactor design for tissue-engineered heart valves and in-house expertise with heart perfusion models to build a system that can maintain heart valves viable outside of the human body.

To that end, your research will include a selection of techniques including: i) flow-based bioreactor development, ii) sterile vessel and tissue culture, and iii) sophisticated tissue analysis including advanced microscopy. You are expected to write a doctoral thesis and publish your research results in scientific journals. A small part of your doctoral position will involve teaching in courses as well as the supervision of students at the bachelor’s and master’s levels offered by the group. Also, an educational and professional development program will be offered to you.

You will be embedded in a highly inspiring research environment, both socially and professionally, which facilitates access to high-end research facilities, as well as fosters interdisciplinary collaborations. You will be an integral member of the Soft Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology (STEM) group of the Department Biomedical Engineering, and specifically operate at the interface of the teams led by Assistant Professor dr Marijn Peters (Translational Engineering for Pediatric Cardiovascular Regeneration) and Professor Carlijn Bouten (Cell-Matrix Interactions for Cardiovascular Regeneration) at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at TU/e. You will also work together with the team of Julie Legrand (Mechanical Engineering) and Assistant Professor Marcel Rutten (Cardiovascular Biomechanics) to build upon their work on Soft Robotics Systems, Biomechanical models, and Vascular Bioreactors.

Your project is aligned with our BIOSHIELD consortium of the Hartstichting: BIOengineering immune Shielded Heart valve Implants: Engineering Living Donor tissue by translating prenatal protection mechanisms from the womb to the heart. In this consortium, we work together with cardiothoracic surgery and transplantation immunology at the University Medical Center Utrecht and the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital and the ETB-Bislife Multi Tissue Center. We stimulate and foster cross-institutional collaborations as part of the project.