The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering has announced the election of Monica Hinds, Ph.D., to the 2022 Class of the AIMBE College of Fellows. Professor and assistant dean of Graduate Affairs in the OHSU School of Medicine Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hinds was nominated, reviewed and elected by peers and members of the AIMBE College of Fellows for outstanding contributions to vascular bioengineering.
The Hinds laboratory takes a broad approach to studying cardiovascular disease. Projects in the lab include studies of heart development, the progression of heart and vascular disease, and the treatment of disease with cardiovascular devices.
Hinds has pioneered work investigating the role of the cytoskeleton, a network of regulatory proteins, on the function of endothelial cells, which line blood vessels and regulate exchanges between the bloodstream and the surrounding tissues.
In 2008, she established for the first time that micropatterned surfaces were able to replicate the cytoskeletal elongation normally seen in vivo under blood flow conditions. Her lab went on to show that the elongated cytoskeletons of micropatterned endothelial cells regulated immunogenicity, or unwanted immune responses.
The Hinds Lab has translated this knowledge for new biomaterial designs and is now using single cell analyses to determine the molecular drivers of cytoskeletal-induced immunogenicity.
Hinds also has made significant contributions to the translation of technology through her work both to established clinically relevant testing of blood contacting devices and her models of thrombus, or clot, formation. Those models have provided the primary pre-clinical data supporting clinical studies of two anti-coagulant therapies.
Hinds’ testing of blood contacting medical devices is the most clinically relevant testing available to determine the mechanisms of thrombus initiation and progression, as well as the need to anti-coagulants.
The data from this model is often used by companies to support their FDA applications. The models of thrombus formation were used in support of the protein C activator AB002 therapy, which was recently demonstrated to be safe in a phase 1 first in human clinical trial (NCT03453060). Additionally, the antibody for coagulation factory XI, AB023, was shown to reduce platelet rich thrombus growth in Hinds’ models. Importantly, testing of this antibody has now completed phase 1 safety (NCT03097341) and phase 2 efficacy in end-stage renal disease dialysis prevention of thrombus formation (NCT03612856).
Hinds has been invited to speak at the World Congress of Biomechanics in Taipei, where she will discuss the lab’s work on the efficacy of a factor XII inhibitor on in-stent thrombosis at two shear rates.
A formal induction ceremony will be held during AIMBE’s 2022 Annual Event on March 25.
