Home Department: undeclared
Mentors: Kristy Red-Horse (Biology) and Mark Skylar-Scott (Bioengineering)

2025 Research Project:"Enhancing Cardiac Organoid Growth and Complexity through Targeted Nutrient Injection"

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect, affecting 1% of newborns, yet only 15% of cases have a known cause. Cardiac organoids (cardioids) are 3D cellular models that mimic early heart development and hold promise for studying CHD origins. However, their size is limited by restricted media diffusion to their core, reducing their ability to replicate complex heart structures. Marta’s project will investigate whether we can overcome this limitation by injecting nutrient-rich media into the cardioid’s center. She will grow, inject, image, and analyze cardioids to improve their structural and functional accuracy for CHD research.

2026 Research Project:"Quantitative Mechanical Drug Testing in CHD Cardiac Organoids"

Congenital heart disease (CHD) affects ~1% of newborns, yet many cases still have no targeted treatment. Cardiac organoids (cardioids) are tiny 3D heart-like tissues grown from patient cells that model early heart development and can be used to test drugs. A major challenge is that drug effects are often judged by observation rather than a quantitative measure of function. They will use a custom “squisher” to compress each cardioid and measure stiffness and squeeze strength, to model heart performance. They will treat CHD and healthy cardioids with function-enhancing drugs and test whether CHD cardioids become more like healthy ones.