Heart Valve Disease and Therapies

The heart valve subgroup was established in 2010, as the first focus area for our lab. Our overarching goal is to use engineering principles to understand the biomechanics shortcomings of current heart valve interventions, surgical and transcatheter, and develop new approach and technologies that can be used clinically.

Project 1: Biomechanics of the mitral and tricuspid valve after surgical repairs

The mitral and tricuspid valve have 3-dimensional structures that are anchored at various points to the cardiac chambers surrounding them. Dynamic motion of the cardiac chambers impacts the mechanics and kinematics of the valves, and thus their function is interrelated. In patients with dilated or dysfunction failing hearts, changes in the cardiac chambers also alters the valve geometries, restricting their closure in systole. This leads to leakage of blood through the valves, which increases mortality. Surgical and interventional techniques to restore mitral and tricuspid valve geometry are proposed, but their efficacy and long term impact are not known.

Biomechanics of mitral-valve left ventricular interactions

Fibrosis & its inhibition after valve repair

Hemodynamic efficacy of tricuspid valve repairs

Project 2: Development of new transcatheter mitral and tricuspid valve interventions

The era of heart valve therapies is transitioning from open heart surgery to transcatheter interventions that can be performed in a beating heart, with catheters that are guided with imaging. We have developed a new repair technology that uses focal leaflet enhancement to correct functional mitral and tricuspid regurgitation. The Cardiac Leaflet Enhancer (CARLEN) is a miniature, anchor-less, implant that attaches to the native heart valve at the site of regurgitation, and immediately corrects FMR. 

Project 3: Imaging driven computational modeling of the mitral and tricuspid valve

Assessing new transcatheter repair or replacement technologies for the mitral and tricuspid valve require bench, computational and animal models of the disease state. We are developing anatomically correct computational models of the mitral and tricuspid valve, using imaging data from preclinical models and human datasets. Mechanical properties of different tissues are being tested from healthy and disease animal models and tissue that is explanted and discarded from human surgeries.