To schedule a meeting with Dr. Sethu to discuss an opportunity listed below, please contact by email at psethu@uabmc.edu.
To schedule a meeting with Dr. Sethu to discuss an opportunity listed below, please contact by email at psethu@uabmc.edu.
Undergraduate research opportunities are available for students interested in the general area of in-vitro cell culture models or “Tissue Chips”. Our laboratory builds tissue chip models of various tissues including the cardiac, vascular, kidney and cancer tissues.
We are interested in highly motivated students willing to commit time towards training and learning lab skills prior to beginning work on independent or mentored projects. Performing research in the laboratory requires time, commitment and hard work. Undergraduate students that have been successful in the lab have published in conferences and in peer-reviewed journals and moved on to graduate school or medical school.
Research in the Sethu Laboratory:
The focus of my laboratory is the development of tissue chip (TC) models of cardiac, vascular, renal and cancer tissue. My laboratory pioneered the development of cardiac and vascular TC (CTC and VTC) models where hemodynamic loading and unloading associated with blood flow are accurately replicated. Almost all diseases of the heart and blood vessels are associated with pathological levels of hemodynamic stress. Therefore, it is critical that physiologically relevant CTC and VTC models accurately replicate pathophysiological levels of hemodynamic stress to more accurately model the relevant disease states. Current in-vitro models are simplistic and fail to replicate the complex, time-varying levels of stress signals such as pressure, stretch and shear stress resulting in models that poorly approximate tissues in-vivo. Our ultimate goal is to develop human CTC and VTC models using either patient derived primary cells or cardiomyocytes differentiated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPS-CMs) that can be used as standalone platforms or integrated with other TC models within MPS to create complex human body-on-a-chip platforms for disease modeling, drug discovery and drug toxicity testing. In addition to the CTC and VTC, my laboratory is also in the process of developing a Renal Proximal Tubule Chip (RPTC) and has already developed a Parathyroid Tissue Chip (PTC).
Techniques used in our laboratory:
– 3D Tissue Culture
– Microfluidic Device Design and Fabrication
– Mock Flow Loops
– Physiologically Relevant Cell Culture Models
– Immunofluorescence Microscopy
– Flow Cytometry
Available opportunities for UG Students:
We are interested in highly motivated students willing to commit time towards training and learning lab skills prior to beginning work on independent or mentored projects. Performing research in the laboratory requires time, commitment and hard work. Undergraduate students that have been successful in the lab have published in conferences and in peer-reviewed journals and moved on to graduate school or medical school.