Heart Valve Biomechanics and Therapies

Recent publications

​The heart valve subgroup was established in 2010, as the first focus area for our lab. Our overarching goal is to design better surgical and transcatheter repairs for functional mitral and tricupsid regurgitation. 

Our in vitro platform is a pulsatile mitral and tricuspid valve simulator to study the biomechanics of different repair strategies, to optimize them or test new approaches.

Our in vivo platform is a swine model of mitral and tricuspid regurgitation, to study the chronic safety and efficacy of our approaches for further translational to patients.

Project 1: Hemodynamic and biomechanical analysis of heart valve repairs

We developed in vitro models of the right and left heart simulators, into which native mitral or tricuspid valves can be mounted and instrumented for hemodynamic and biomechanics studies. The simulators are instrumented with electromagnetic flow probes and pressure transducers to measure hemodynamics of the heart valves. The native heart valves itself are instrumented with force transducers or optical markers to measure the biomechanics of the valves. These techniques are applied to the valves, to study the impact of pathologies on valve function, the efficacy of new surgical repair strategies, and the potential benefit of new trans-catheter repair devices.

Project 2: 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.

Project 3: Development of new transcatheter mitral and tricuspid valve interventions

We are currently working on two trans-catheter repair devices to correct mitral and tricuspid regurgitation.
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(1) The cardiac leaflet enhancer (CARLEN) is a focal native leaflet augmenting implant that can be used to repair functional mitral and tricuspid regurgitation.The technology is in late preclinical studies, and is being developed for use in clinical studies in the near future.

(2) The mitral neoleaflet device is a trans-catheter approach to repair mitral valve prolapse, without the need to place anchors into the leaflet or the myocardium, thus eliminating the risk of pull out from any of these tissues.