Electrical stimulation of Cardiomyocytes in a Heart-on-a-Chip.
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a serious health status affecting 33 million worldwide. The drug development for AF is cost intensive and a time-consuming process. Organ-on-Chip technology has the potential to revolutionize drug development. While conventional processes involve animal testing, this number can be reduced significantly by using human stem cell derived cardiomyocytes.
The goal of this internship is the implementation of carbon/gold electrodes in the current Heart-on-a-Chip design, the culture of HL-1 cardiomyocytes in the chip and the pacing of cells using the sputtered electrodes. The success of the pacing is followed by fluo-4 staining of the calcium influx. The project also involves a cardiac protein staining followed by fluorescence microscopy to study the effect of long-term pacing on cardiomyocytes.
Educational program:
– Biomedical Lab Research
Interested, please send your motivation letter and CV before 3 June 2024 to Michelle Fleermann (m.fleermann@saxion.nl)