Brandon Tefft
Medical College of Wisconsin, WI·Biomedical Engineering
Implanted heart and blood-vessel devices save lives, but blood tends to clot on their artificial surfaces. Patients then need anticoagulant drugs and still face risks of blockage and of clots breaking loose (embolism).
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Engineering
- Topics
vascular grafts
endothelialization
endothelial cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Identify signaling pathways that let a subset of endothelial cells stay attached under blood-like shear stress, using RNA sequencing to compare gene activity in all cells versus cells that remain attached.
- Develop a molecular modulation strategy that turns adhesion-related signaling molecules up or down, and test whether it improves endothelial cell retention on vascular graft materials under physiological shear stress.
- Test small-diameter grafts lined with the best-performing cells in pig carotid arteries, measuring cell retention, graft patency, clotting, neointimal hyperplasia and inflammation.
More about the research
Natural vessels avoid this because they are lined with endothelial cells, a thin cell layer that keeps blood flowing smoothly. In coronary bypass surgery, synthetic grafts with small diameters often block. Surgeons therefore harvest a patient's own vessel, which adds cost and causes injury at the harvest site, and many patients have no suitable vessel. Lining small grafts with a patient's own endothelial cells could solve this, but the cells tend to wash off once blood flows.
Why it matters
Coronary heart disease patients needing bypass surgery could benefit from small synthetic grafts that stay open, avoiding the need to harvest their own vessels. A lasting lining of the patient's own cells on implanted devices may reduce clotting and embolism and lessen reliance on anticoagulant drugs. The approach could also apply to other blood-contacting devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Alan Vorp
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether bulk tissue mass density predicts local tensile strength in human thoracic aortic aneurysm tissue, extending a density-strength relationship the team validated in porcine aorta.
Lisa Rong
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Compare how single versus multiple arterial grafting during bypass surgery changes heart function, measured as echo strain by transesophageal echocardiography, and whether changes relate to blood pressure-support drug use.
Zhongjun Wu
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Biomedical Engineering
Characterize how high mechanical shear stress changes neutrophil structure, rolling and adhesion, and surface markers, and quantify how structural damage scales with stress levels found in VADs and ECMO.
The school
Medical College of Wisconsin: 17 labs on PI Pages, $360M a year on research, 44 research doctorates a year.
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