Evaluating Endothelial Cell Metabolism using MFA

Presenter: Andrew Li, Bioengineering, Global Public Health Scholars

I worked in a bioengineering lab on a project that studied cellular inhibitors that are being explored for their potential use in medicine. Using a computational model, we were able to observe the effect of limiting certain metabolic pathways and how they affected the overall metabolism in human endothelial cells. It was important to evaluate the effect on endothelial cells as they have unique applications when it comes to cancer and cardiovascular disease and to ensure that no off-target effects can potentially harm the patient. I found that this project had some unique applications to global health in that cardiovascular disease has become one of the highest causes of mortality around the world and the prospect of new treatments potentially containing side effects could lead to ever expanding health inequities across borders.

2 Comments

Derek Vidal

May 06, 2021

What was the most difficult part working with and analyzing endothelial cells? Do you think MFA will change the outcomes of cardiovascular disease in the future?

Andrew Li

May 10, 2021

Replying to

Hey Derek!

Much to my surprise, endothelial cells are pretty easy to work with! They're pretty resilient cells and are easy to feed and manage. I would say the most difficult part has got to be seeding the cells for experiments, just because it is quite a time consuming process. That coupled with lysing the cells (where you break them up) for protein quantification took a couple hours each time.

As for your second question, it's hard to say. The technology is promising, and evaluating widespread changes within certain cells could prove useful in the future for ensuring that we don't mess with a reaction that we don't want to touch. However, there are some pretty clear limits to the…