Amy Rosen, a 25 year-old M.D., Ph. D. student, was selected as one of 11 national finalists in the 2006 Collegiate Inventors Competition, a program operated by the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Her entry, entitled ‘Tracking the 3-D Distribution of Delivered Stem Cells In Vivo with Quantum Dot (QD) Nanoparticles’ or ‘Tracking Stem Cells,’ earned her a graduate finalist designation in this prestigious competition.
Ms. Rosen, using nanotechnology, specifically fluorescent quantum dot nanoparticles, developed a rapid and dependable method for consistently labeling and tracking stem cells for a period up to eight weeks in vivo (in vivo refers to experimentation done in or on the living tissue of a whole, living organism, as opposed to a partial or dead one).
For the first time, Amy, a student in the School of Medicine’s Biomedical Engineering and Physiology and Biophysics program, has generated a complete three-dimensional reconstruction of the distribution of Quantum Dot labeled stem cells in the heart. This creation allows more data to be collected, providing valuable information about potential safety and the viability of therapeutic stem cells.
Rosen’s mentor, Ira S. Cohen, M.D., Ph.D., leading professor of Physiology and Biophysics and Director, Institute of Molecular Cardiology at Stony Brook University, said that her approach has solved a major problem many researchers find in the process of developing more effective pacemakers.
The study started as a collaborative effort between researchers at Stony Brook University and Columbia University, which received industry support from Guidant Corporation of Indianapolis (now Boston Scientific). With their help, the study furthered their research for replacing electronic pacemaker devices with a biological solution, one that can vary the heart’s beats to fit the body’s needs, as is required during variations in exercise or emotion. They studied new gene and cell therapy to provide a better understanding of how genetically engineered cells can help pace the heart. This is a five-year, phased investment that will build on research already conducted at both universities. Amy joined the laboratory shortly after the five-year contract began.
According to Dr. Cohen, ‘When Amy joined the laboratory, we had a functional biological pacemaker ‘device,’ and solid funding for further research, but the challenge remained: we could not reliably find, enumerate and reconstruct the positions of the stem cells that we delivered in vivo,’ said Dr. Cohen. ‘Amy, entirely by herself, developed a passive loading technique that uniformly labeled large populations of stem cells without reducing cell viability. She is a hard worker who has a unique ability to take what she has learned in other disciplines and apply this to her research.’
The Collegiate Inventors Competition is an international competition, designed to encourage college students to be active in science, engineering, mathematics, technology and creative invention. The competition, now in its 14th year, recognizes and rewards the innovations, discoveries and research by college and university students and their advisers for projects leading to inventions that can be patented. Awards will be issued to one Undergraduate winner, one Graduate winner, and one Grand Prize winner. Rosen is one of seven graduate finalists. On Thursday October 19, finalist winners will be announced in Alexandria, VA.
