Dr. Rebecca Heise has served as the department chair of biomedical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) since 2024. In 2023, Dr. Heise was awarded the Inez A Caudill Jr Distinguished Professorship in Biomedical Engineering. She holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at VCU and is a member of the Massey Cancer Center, the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, and the Center for Pharmaceutical Engineering. She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering with an additional major in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. She earned her PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. She then did her postdoctoral work in the Laboratory of Respiratory Biology at the NIEHS in Research Triangle Park, NC. She joined the faculty of Biomedical Engineering at VCU in 2010, earned promotion and tenure at the Associate level in 2017, and became a full Professor in 2024. Dr. Heise’s research focuses on pulmonary mechanobiology and regenerative medicine. Her laboratory has been consistently funded by the NIH, NSF, and the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Newswise — Athens, Ga. – Mechanical ventilation can be a lifesaver for patients suffering from lung disorders such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and pneumonia. Unfortunately, the use of ventilators to support breathing can cause further lung injury, particularly in elderly patients.
Now, a team of researchers at the University of Georgia and Virginia Commonwealth University has developed a computer model to help scientists better understand changes in lung function and respiratory mechanics as people age. They say their work could lead to improved treatment protocols for patients requiring mechanical ventilation. The study was published yesterday in the journal PLOS ONE.
Co-authors of the study are Rebecca Heise, an associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at VCU; Angela Reynolds, an associate professor in the department of mathematics and applied mathematics at VCU; and JongWon Kim, a research associate in the UGA College of Engineering.
As we age, our lungs, tissues and airways are changing and becoming more sensitive. We think that for elderly patients, those changes may play a role in the inflammatory response and how well they respond to ventilation. So our models account for the effects of aging. For this work I am collaborating with experts in engineering and medicine, including Rebecca Heise, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the VCU School of Engineering; Ramana Pidaparti, Ph.D., professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering in the VCU School of Engineering; and Kevin Ward, M.D., formerly with the VCU School of Medicine and now faculty at the University of Michigan...
Research Grants
Age Dependent Mechanical Ventilator-Induced Inflammation: Modeling and Experiments 1R01AG041823-01A1 (MPI)
National Institutes of Health Studying mechanotransduction of aging cells in the lung.
CAREER: Propagation of Lung Fibrosis through Mechanotransduction CMMI-135162
National Science Foundation Studying mechanotransduction of alveolar epithelial cells leading to pulmonary fibrosis.
The field of stem cell biology, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine has expanded almost exponentially, in the last decade. Clinical trials are evaluating the potential therapeutic use of stem cells in many adult and pediatric lung diseases with vascular component, such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), or pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Extensive research activity is exploring the lung resident and circulating progenitor cells and their contribution to vascular complications of chronic lung diseases, and researchers hope to use resident or circulating stem/progenitor cells to treat chronic lung diseases and their vascular complications. It is becoming more and more clear that progress in mechanobiology will help to understand the various influences of physical forces and extracellular matrix composition on the phenotype and features of the progenitor cells and stem cells. The current review provides an overview of current concepts in the field.
Highlights • 4 h mechanical ventilation causes lung injury and death in elderly mice. • The effect is strongly blunted in young subjects or by using a low tidal volume. • Pulmonary edema was hypothesized as an upstream mechanism of this mortality. • A novel conservative fluid protocol was proposed to attenuate these effects. • Conservative fluid support significantly decreased edema and mortality in old mice.
