Online-only: Jacot receives CAREER award

By Brooke Bullock     2/24/11 6:00pm

The Thresher interviewed Bioengineering Professor Jeffrey Jacot, who recently received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. Note: All answers are paraphrased for clarity unless otherwise noted.How did you get involved with NSF?

It's one of the major funders for my type of research: working with amniotic stem cells, which can be isolated from second trimester amniotic fluid and used in research. It's fairly basic level research, which is what NSF is interested in - things that may be applicable in the future but right now are still being tested.

What project did you submit for the CAREER award? Explain

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Working with amniotic stem cells, my lab is trying to find novel treatments for congenital heart disease. For example, if a baby is born with a heart defect, right now that would require several surgeries and using plastic or non-functional tissue to repair the heart. My lab is working on growing functional heart tissue in the lab. One problem is what cells do you use? Native heart tissue doesn't divide like skin cells so it can't be used. Another problem is the rejection of the tissue or material by the body. There is about 15 to 25 percent chance of rejection, and that hasn't changed in 20 years. We want to use the patient's own tissue to reduce that chance of rejection. It has been recently discovered that stem cells from amniotic fluid are able to divide and become various types of cells just like human embryonic stem cells. 60 to 80 percent of heart defects are diagnosed in utero. Because of this we could gather the amniotic fluid and create heart tissue so that tissue for the surgeries would not be rejected because it is made from the patient's own cells.

Right now we're working with basic ways to see if the amniotic fluid cells have the potential to do this. My lab is not only putting in chemicals but also looking at the environment in which heart tissues develop. We want to electrically and mechanically stimulate the tissue as it would be in its native environment. I have a joint position with Texas Children's Hospital as Director of the Pediatric Cardiovascular Bioengineering Lab, which gives me the ability to work with congenital heart surgeons. We can see what kind of technology will be needed in the future and get the amniotic fluid and heart tissue for our research. We also get immediate response from the clinic side of things, which is a big help.

How does your project combine research and education?

We're also working with the John P. McGovern Museum here in Houston next to the Children's Museum, consulting with them on the heart part of their exhibit. We want to educate middle school and high school students on heart surgeries and technology. This would also mean educating the teachers and involve setting up a workshop for them. We already go out to high schools to give talks. Here at Rice we want to promote more ways to educate students, like problem-based learning where students work together on problems and make presentations so that learning isn't just all lecture and exams.

One of the goals of the program is to encourage leadership: How does your project do this?

I think leadership is combined with the education, reaching out to students and teachers.

How do you feel about receiving the CAREER award?

I'm pretty happy about it! It's a great opportunity for national recognition for the lab. It recognizes that this is a good way to do research.

How will you use the CAREER award to continue your research?

The award will fund a Rice graduate student working in the lab on the amniotic fluid research. Also its funds will help us develop technology for the electrical and mechanical stimulation for research as well as develop technology for the analysis of the research.

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