19 July 2021
Dear Colleague,
Dr. Zahra (Parisa) Motamed directs the Cardiovascular Research Group and is an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Mechanical Engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. She is also a research affiliate faculty member at the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science and Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA.
Dr. Zahra (Parisa) Motamed
Dr. Motamed recently spoke with Rob Fraser, ViVitro Labs applications manager, about her work developing diagnostic and predictive tools and regulatory medical device testing machines for complex ventricular-valvular-vascular disease (Complex VVVD) and transcatheter valve intervention.
You are working on non-invasive, image-based patient-specific diagnostic and predictive tools and realistic regulatory medical device testing machines. How is your work progressing?
Dr. Motamed: Currently, we develop diagnostic and predictive tools as well as regulatory medical device testing machines for the most general and fundamentally challenging cardiovascular condition: complex ventricular-valvular-vascular disease (Complex VVVD) and transcatheter valve intervention. Complex VVVD represents conditions in which multiple ventricular, valvular and vascular pathologies have mechanical interactions with one another wherein physical phenomena associated with each pathology amplify the effects of others on the cardiovascular system. Until recently, the only possible choice for high-risk patients with valvular diseases was surgical replacement of the valve, which has a high mortality rate.
Transcatheter valve replacement is an emerging minimally invasive procedure and is a growing alternative for patients with valvular diseases across a broad risk spectrum. The interesting point is that when we develop something for a diagnostic tool, we can use it for predictive, we can use it even for regulatory testing machine, both computationally and experimentally. So therefore, they are covering both in terms of methodology.
We currently have in excess of thirty patients walking around with an aortic valve and everybody is doing remarkably well. We have patients out over one year with no anticoagulation. The one year follow up and paper should be published relatively soon. On the heels of that, we’ve also been approved for an EFS for a mitral valve. We just recently had our first two implants in this study, so that is pretty exciting.
Has ViVitro helped with your work?
Dr. Motamed: Absolutely! My lab is building 3 different cardiovascular simulators for different test purposes. For these developments, my lab needs a pump that creates reliable physiological cardiac flows for various cardiovascular diseases and their related medical devices.
Moreover, cardiovascular simulation that will be developed in Motamed lab, should be adapted to operate free from pathogenic microorganisms. For this purpose, to keep the cells alive during the cardiac cycle loading, this cardiovascular simulator should be temperature-controlled and operate with a sterile medium instead of water. The ViVitro SuperPump and its accessories, in our knowledge, are the only equipment on the market that have the above-mentioned capabilities.
Read the full interview here.
Read other Cardiovascular Pioneer interviews here.
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contact them today to find solutions that advance your R&D projects.
On behalf of my team, I wish you and your family good health.
Sincerely,
