INQUIRING MINDS
The Jurney and the Destination
By Cassie Myers
SJSU Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Patrick Jurney is a teacher, mentor and researcher working on a new type of synthetic graft to help patients with heart disease.
When you walk into San José State Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Patrick Jurney’s office, you sense immediately that you’re meeting a man who cares deeply for his students and his work. He’s enthusiastic, kind and patient while explaining difficult concepts. Early in our interview he pulls out a 3-D printed model of bypass graft geometry, an intriguing little plastic arch inches wide that could, potentially, mean the difference between life and death for a patient.
The problem is this: heart disease is far too prevalent in America. Around 350,000–400,000 patients a year require coronary artery bypass graft (also known as CABG) surgery, which helps repair damaged heart vasculature by creating grafts to help with blood flow to the heart. Surgeons usually create these grafts from what physicians call autologous tissue, tissue taken directly from the patient’s body, often their veins. This method is often effective, but it has its costs. Surgery to remove and graft these veins into new locations often means a long and painful recovery for patients.
What’s more, Jurney says that in 10% of CABG patients, vessels may be damaged or have already been used in a previous CABG procedure. Those patients get a graft made of synthetic material, essentially Gore-Tex, the same material in waterproof winter coats. Unfortunately, half of these Gore-Tex grafts fail within two years. Due to the nature of the graft, the “wrong” types of cells build up and block healthy blood flow. As Jurney puts it, these grafts “never really integrate into the body.”
Patrick Jurney and his undergraduate student researchers examine holotomographic microscope images for clues for improving endothelialization of next-generation biomaterials. Photo: Jim Gensheimer.
Ammar Babiker, a master's student in Jurney's lab, cultures endothelial cells for use in his studies of endothelialization. Photo: Jim Gensheimer.
A new kind of graft
That’s where Jurney and his team of SJSU students come in, using National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research and an engineering-minded approach. On the mechanical engineering side, they’re searching for a synthetic material for the graft that matches the properties of the artery. And on the biomedical engineering side, they’re trying to design the inside surface of the graft so “the cells from the patient migrate onto the graft in a healthy way.”
To do that, the synthetic material needs to reach the promised land: endothelialization.
Endothelial cells are the bouncers of the cell world, lining all the vessels of the body and essentially controlling what comes in and out of the blood flow. Jurney’s team hopes to create an endothelialized synthetic graft, built up with cells that the body recognizes as its own, homegrown bouncers, letting blood flow in and out and regulating waste effectively.
Graduate Student Sam Lee manufacturing her microfluidic device using soft lithography. Photo: Jim Gensheimer.
Silicon Valley style
Right now Jurney’s lab is focusing on a synthetic graft made out of polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA. But the problem is that PVA alone doesn’t promote endothelialization. That’s where the Silicon Valley know-how comes in. Jurney and his team are using tech-based technology, specifically a manufacturing process used for semiconductor industry processing called reactive ion plasma, to promote endothelialization.
As he puts it, “We intentionally use tools from Silicon Valley to leverage our geographic strength here and also our students’ desires to work around here.”
This has yet another advantage: Jurney’s lab is equipping San José State students with skills they’ll use when they go out into the workforce.
“The high tech tools we use give our students high value skills,” he says. “They can use engineering analysis, the experimental method, and even these manufacturing tools in whatever lab they walk into. And the students can then apply those tools to whatever problem their company is trying to solve.”
“We train our students in a rigorous way, and then we put that science out there and hope that other people pick it up. And then together we continue to progress humanity forward.”
— Patrick Jurney
Beyond CABG
If Jurney’s new synthetic vasculature works, it won’t just affect coronary artery bypass patients. It could help with many other medical procedures, too, including possible applications for dialysis patients, which could mean a daily quality of life improvement for countless people.
“Dialysis patients have to get vein access every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” he says. “You can't access the same vein without doing damage over time. So if you could have a synthetic material that's like a self-sealing puncture, you can basically implant a synthetic section of graft that you can replace over time. You don't have to poke through the skin; you can just use the graft.”
He calls this idea “pie in the sky,” but it is a possibility, and something that drives his work, as well as that of his students.
Lee’s eyes light up as she speaks about the future, both of the research and for her career. “I hope someone can carry on my research and actually successfully endothelialize grafts for the better,” she says. "If someone actually figures out how to stabilize cells on the graft, I would love to [work on that].”
Their collective hope is that even if they don’t personally have the resources to “carry this particular ball across the finish line,” they can publish their research for other scientists to use and cite and move forward with.
Jurney sums it up this way:
“We do good science. We train our students in a rigorous way, and then we put that science out there and hope that other people pick it up,” he says. “And then together we continue to progress humanity forward.”
Juliette Noyer
Sam Lee
An amazing mentor
Juliette Noyer, ’24 BS, ’25 MS Biomedical Engineering, is one of the students who has benefited from this kind of training. She’s an undergraduate researcher in the lab, working on determining how to increase the patency of synthetic vascular grafts by enhancing the endothelialization of biomaterials.
She calls working in the lab “an amazing experience” and is grateful for the exposure to scientific research. “These past two semesters, I learned so many things in the lab that helped me apply the material I learned in my classes and will hopefully benefit me in my future career,” she says.
She also cites Jurney as a major inspiration for her work: “He really cares about the students who work with him. He’s an amazing mentor and definitely someone I can go to if I have important questions about research or other types of things.”
Sam Lee, ’23 MS Biomedical Engineering, is also working on endothelialization in the lab. Her project aims to figure out whether micro-gratings (putting cells on repeating “steps”) and physiological flow conditions can create the “good” kind of endothelial cells that synthetic grafts need. She joined the Jurney lab in January, and is equally enthusiastic about her project and working with him.
“He’s great,” she says. Like Noyer, she’s grateful for his weekly one-on-one meetings, and adds that he’s also helped her personally. “He's given me a lot of confidence to know that, hey, actually I can do these things.”
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