Home Department: Mechanical Engineering
2023 Mentor: Melody Smith (Medicine - Blood & Marrow Transplantation)
2024 Mentor: Sarah Heilshorn (Materials Science & Engineering)

2023 Research Project:“Off-the-shelf Fully Human CD5/CD7 Bispecific VH CAR-γδ T cell Therapy to Treat T cell Malignancies”

T cell malignancies are a serious and life-threatening disease characterized by the abnormal growth of T cells. Current treatments for relapses are ineffective.
Isabella aims to develop a therapy that is ready-to-use and utilizes special cells called γδ T cells from healthy donors. These cells are equipped with special tools, known as Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs), which are designed to target two markers on the cancer cells and offer a potentially novel way to kill T-cell malignancies.
 

2024 Research Project:"Combining GUIDE-3DP with UNION: Embedding Vasculature into Densely Cellular Tissue Via an Outside-In Diffusion Strategy for Fabrication of Perfusable Tissue Structures"

Vascularization remains one of the most critical challenges in the formation of 3D multicellular structures for organ printing. In collaboration with the Skylar-Scott Lab as part of the Health Enabling Advancements through Regenerative Tissue Printing (HEART) project, the team aims to use their vasculature printing techniques with the goal of fabricating vasculature within dense cardiac aggregate tissue. In their strategy, vessels with precise and tunable dimensions are formed based on the uniform outside-in diffusion of crosslinkers from the cardioid support bath into a printed bio-ink. The aim of Isabella’s project is the fabrication of fluid-perfusable structures with complex branch points and the incorporation of multiple cell types, with the ultimate goal of 3D bioprinting a human heart.