New faculty Best advancing medical device research

A lipid biochemist by training, University of Illinois Research Assistant Professor Catherine Best joined the Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory (MNTL) and Department of Bioengineering in May. Best comes to engineering from the Illinois College of Medicine, where she taught neuroscience courses the last seven years.

Best’s research brings engineering approaches to bear on two major health issues—sickle cell disease and brain damage due to stroke and trauma. She and her students will use MNTL’s biological and nanotechnology facilities to create medical devices that may someday lead to better treatments for these conditions.

Sickle cell disease is a genetically inherited disorder that causes oxygen-carrying red blood cells to become abnormally shaped. As a result, these cells die prematurely and get stuck in blood vessels where they block the flow of blood to certain organs. Left untreated, sickle cell disease can cause a shortage of red blood cells (anemia), organ damage, and even death.

Best and her graduate students will utilize microfluidic devices to examine the biophysical and biomechanical changes that occur at the cellular level as oxygen and carbon dioxide are diffused into healthy and unhealthy red blood cells. She’s particularly interested in investigating the observed changes in red blood cell membrane fluidity.

Before coming to Illinois in 2007, Best conducted several fluidity studies on red blood cells at Massachusetts General Hospital, including a project designed to better understand how the body metabolizes alcohol and to discover whether biomarkers existed for alcohol abuse or binge drinking.

In her other area of Illinois research, Best is developing methods and devices that may alleviate brain damage in the critical 24-48 hours after a stroke or traumatic injury. In this time frame, after the initial injury, there is an area of expanding vulnerable tissue—the penumbra—that remains viable.

“I want to try and prevent the post injury brain tissue death by limiting the increase in [brain] temperature and by better understanding the temporal dynamics of the neuropathophysiology,” Best said.

Typically, with an injury or stroke, normal blood flow to the brain is interrupted or compromised, which results in the brain swelling and getting hotter. “Your brain basically auto-digests with an increase in temperature,” explained Best. “The brain requires constant blood flow to take away the heat.”

Best’s approach makes use of the brain’s natural support and protective capabilities—particularly cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which is a clear liquid in the skull that cools and bathes the brain. She proposes developing a device that can measure and regulate the CSF temperature, while also providing information about the biochemical cascade that follows brain injury. The device could be surgically inserted in a patient’s cranium shortly after the initial trauma—in the emergency room, for example.

“We say there’s a biochemical cascade that occurs but it has never been fully elucidated,” she said. “Nor do we know what the markers are for improved outcomes.”

At this point, Best and her research group have developed models of the proposed selective brain cooling device for incidents of stroke and traumatic brain injury. They will eventually use the nanofabrication and bionanotechnology facilities in MNTL to fabricate the device.

“As a biologist, I always look at how things are done naturally because they have the benefit of many years of evolution to perfect the design,” explained Best. “The simpler approaches to science, medicine, and translational medicine are the ones that are the most feasible and will have the biggest impact.”