What does a urinary catheter have in common with a pair of new shoes? Why add a robot arm to a mass spectrometry lab? How can petri dishes on the International Space Station further cancer research?
These questions are related to the work of three Notre Dame researchers — Ana Lidia Flores-Mireles, the Janet C. and Jeffrey A. Hawk Collegiate Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences; Matthew Champion, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry; and Meenal Datta, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering — and represent a tiny sampling of the biomedical research taking place at Notre Dame and beyond.
In the spirit of the University’s recently launched Bioengineering and Life Sciences Initiative (BELS), these researchers draw on a multidisciplinary mindset to make discoveries and create new tools in fields related to biomedicine — ultimately aiming to improve the health and well-being of people globally.
Flores-Mireles is a microbiologist delving into why urinary catheters are linked to infection. Catheters are critical tools — ubiquitous in medical procedures that involve sedation — and used when people have difficulty urinating naturally — but they have a downside: like a new pair of shoes, they chafe.
On a molecular scale, the resulting inflammation yields a scaffold-like framework of healing proteins which, ironically, turns out to be an ideal habitat for pathogens to grow and feed. This “bed-and-breakfast” scenario, as Flores-Mireles describes it, causes bladder infections that can spread to the blood and lead to sepsis and death.
“By understanding this dynamic,” says Flores-Mireles, “we have been able to actually develop efficient intervention strategies.”
Trying to crack down on the infection-inducing pathogens themselves is like playing a biomedical version of Whac-a-Mole — the pathogens are too varied and too resistant for drugs to effectively control. So Flores-Mireles’ group is targeting the problem one stage earlier. In collaboration with material bioengineer Caitlin Howell, associate professor at the University of Maine, they have developed a new sort of urinary catheter — one soft and flexible enough to minimize irritation to the bladder, with an extra-slippery surface that makes it hard for pathogens to colonize the area. This minimizes the risk of infections developing and spreading to the bloodstream.
Flores-Mireles’s research epitomizes the goals of BELS, established earlier this year. BELS will enable interdisciplinary teams to tackle ambitious projects that could have a lasting impact on global human health — from understanding the basic science that underlies diseases, to developing new health technologies such as better tissue engineering or pathogen detection, to devising tools and networks that will mitigate healthcare access issues resulting from factors like socio-economic status or geographic remoteness.
“The problems of the world are multifaceted and complex, and their solutions require multidisciplinary approaches,” says Paul Bohn, the Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of BELS, “I am excited to see what our community comes up with.”
One way BELS aims to make an impact is by promoting widely applicable research. Champion’s work in mass spectrometry — a method to weigh molecules — fills that bill particularly well.
“Virtually every researcher who comes in contact with the life sciences will at some point use mass spectrometry in their analysis,” says Champion.
His group develops new approaches and techniques — like robotics-assisted sample prep, clearing samples of contaminants that would damage a mass spectrometer — to make indispensable tools even more useful to other researchers. Meanwhile, Champion’s group tackles their own research questions, including monitoring the impact of pathogens by measuring the amounts and types of proteins produced by bacteria over the course of an infection.
Similarly, fundamental to BELS is a primary focus on multidisciplinary collaboration, especially between the College of Science and the College of Engineering. Datta is a chemical and biological engineer whose work is shaped through past experience in medical environments. She studies the mechanical forces that growing tumors exert on their surroundings — including in space, minus the influence of gravity — and the resulting effect on immune and cancer cells.
“Those mechanical forces can have a lot of impact on patient well-being,” Datta said.
She underscored the importance of leveraging different outlooks to solve biomedical problems. For example developing a new drug in vitro to treat tumors would only be the start of a solution.
“From the engineering perspective, I'm thinking, ‘Can I even get the drug to the tumor?’” Datta said, “What kinds of transport and mechanical properties have been altered within that tumor to compromise the blood vessels that feed it and carry the drug?”
To Flores-Mireles, Champion, and Datta, an interdisciplinary approach is fundamental to their past work and indisputably the right way forward. By establishing a new model for deep collaboration among life scientists and engineers, BELS represents a purposeful step in that direction.
“When BELS started to take shape, I was immediately on board with the possibilities because it fits right in with my basic philosophy of science,” said Champion. “The very best things come from multiple disciplines, working together.”
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Story by Alice McBride