TechMed Talent Talks

Abstract

Mental health problems are common and increasing, leading to detrimental long-term outcomes that affect many youth across the globe. Effective prevention and treatment programs that have more than a small effect size and that do not stigmatize or bore those that seek help, are in demand. In this talk, I will discuss how games can be used to benefit (mental) health while not losing sight of the potential negative consequences of technology on behaviour. Subsequently, I will focus on how to design evidence-based games that promote emotional resilience and behaviour change by training skills while youth are immersed in games they love to play. Using a few examples, I will share how we prioritize design and art, integrate science and principles of behavioural change, and how we systematically test these game interventions. Finally, I will introduce a roadmap to the near future, emphasizing our validated toolbox of mindsets and practices.

Biography

Hanneke Scholten is an assistant professor at the Technology, Human and Institutional Behaviour department of the University of Twente, and co-director of the Games for Emotional and Mental Health (GEMH) lab. During her PhD project (January 2020, cum laude) at Radboud University, she designed and tested a game to help youth quit smoking. In her current positions, she is driven to build interdisciplinary collaborations through which digital experiences can be developed that matter to youth and improve their wellbeing. Furthermore, she strives to implement scientifically proven products in the real-world to have an impact on as many youth as possible. Hanneke is a vocal proponent of the potential impact of interactive media on emotional and mental health. To this end, she has published her work in international journals and delivered over 60 presentations and workshops to diverse audiences, including the scientific community, parents, youth, teachers, designers, and psychologists.

Biography

Libera Fresiello works as Assistant Professor in the Cardiovascular and Respiratory Physiology group (CRPH) of Twente.

During her PhD at the Italian National Research Council and at the Polish Academy of Sciences (January 2014, cum laude), she focused on the development of a mixed in silico – in vitro cardiovascular simulator.

During her post-doc at the Cardiac Surgery of KU Leuven (Marie Curie scholarship) and at the Medical Univ. of Vienna (Frans Van de Werf scholarship), she conducted clinical studies on heart failure patients and used this clinical knowledge to develop high fidelity cardiorespiratory simulators. She created and run a laboratory where these simulators are used by industry for the testing of medical devices. In 2021 she was appointed as advisor of the Expert Panel for medical devices of the European Medicines Agency.

Abstract

The development of cardiovascular medical devices (MDs) is a lengthy and costly procedure. MDs must provide efficacy, safety and preferably assure individualized patient care. To meet these requirements, large animals tests are used, that pose ethical issues, imply high costs and are not representative of the complex pathologies of patients. 

My goal is to provide an in vivo-like, time-varying and comprehensive simulator that facilitates MDs design and testing. The simulator has an in silico core that embeds the cardiorespiratory features and controls, and an in vitro anatomical interface to connect MDs. This mixed in silico-in vitro structure assures high flexibility and fidelity, and allows to reproduce clinically relevant scenarios and their evolution over time. The simulator is intended to support industry and academia in bringing more personalized and effective MDs into the clinics. 

Abstract

The road from drug discovery to regulatory approval for new drugs is expensive and takes over a decade. Over 80% of compounds fail in clinical trials due to the often poor predictive value of animal models in preclinical trials. Microfluidic devices which mimic organ tissue physiology, so-called organs-on-chips (OoC), can be used as a human-relevant substitute in the preclinical evaluation of drugs. By providing predictive information, they have the potential to significantly reduce costs in drug development. However, state-of-the-art OoCs are severely underused in biomedical and pharmaceutical research due to complex protocols and set-ups. As a result, their impact on drug development and disease modelling is still limited. To facilitate bringing chips to end-user labs, the Translational Organ-on-Chip Platform (TOP) was developed. TOP uses an open, ISO-standardized interface to connect chips in a plug-and-play manner. Here, I will give an introduction to OoCs and show examples of TOP.

Biography

Anke Vollertsen received her M.Sc. in Biophysics at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2016) and her PhD cum laude at the University of Twente (2020). During her PhD she focused on the parallelization of nanoliter cell culturing chambers for stem cell differentiation with automated medium exchange. Part of this work was the development of the Translational Organ-on-Chip Platform (TOP), which focuses on standardized interfacing of biomicrofluidic modules on a fluidic base plate. She has presented her work at several international conferences and received the Society for Chemistry and Micro-Nano Systems poster award where her poster was selected out of a total of over 700 posters. Currently she is a postdoc at the Applied Stem Cell Technologies group and the TOP senior technology developer at the Organ-on-Chip Center Twente (www.utwente.nl/oocct/TOP/).

Abstract

Wearm.ai

Monitoring changes to the neuromusculoskeletal system has benefits for healthcare as well as sports. For instance, disorders such as stroke and multiple sclerosis have impaired neuromusculoskeletal systems. This impacts the force generated by muscles which results in impaired movement. In case of sports, general training aims to improve the neuromusculoskeletal state, and in case of rehabilitation after injury, it requires rebuilding the neuromusculoskeletal system to its prior glory. Thus, mapping the user specific neuromusculoskeletal system and tracking changes to it has potential applications that can benefit clinicians, physiotherapists, or every day users.

But, how do we characterize the neuromusculoskeletal system? We can stick the person in an advanced laboratory that consists of motion capture systems, cumbersome electromyography systems, and bulky force sensors. This, of course, costs time, personnel, and is not a true replication of daily life movement.

Or, we could use wearables. However, current commercially available systems only track pose and movement. They fail to recreate user specific neuromusculoskeletal systems, which is needed for understanding changes due to training or recovery.

Our solution, wearM.AI, is a fully wearable setup that fingerprints the user specific neuromusculoskeletal system. The system fuses advanced neuromusculoskeletal models with artificial intelligence. With this system, you can create your own specific digital biomechanical twin, while doing training or rehabilitation at the clinic, gym, home, office, or outdoors. You can monitor changes to your twin to track the impact of the training or rehabilitation. This system has potential to radically change the healthcare and sports industry.

We are looking for interested partners who want to explore commercial or research applications. wearM.AI is a spin off from the Neuromechanical Modeling and Engineering Lab at the Department of Biomechanical Engineering.

Abstract

Shoulder orthoses reduce the gravitational pull on the shoulder by providing an upward force to the arm, which can decrease pain caused by stress on the shoulder structures. We developed a novel shoulder subluxation support that applies a force to the upper arm without impeding the functional range of motion of the arm. Our design contains a mechanism that statically balances the arm with two elastic bands. We assessed the clinical effects in 10 patients with chronic shoulder pain.

Biography

Dr. ir. Claudia Haarman is head of the engineering department at Hankamp Rehab with over ten years of experience in biomechanical engineering and exoskeleton development. She received her M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Twente, Netherlands (2012), and a Professional Doctorate in Robotics (2016), also from the University of Twente. IN 2022 she obtained her doctoral degree focusing on the development of functional assistive devices for the impaired shoulder and hand.

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown that 3D cell culture models form a promising platform to study underlying biological processes in different cancer types by providing a controlled and biologically relevant environment. In this study, a novel 3D model was developed focusing on mimicking compressed blood vessels as a key feature in pancreatic cancer which hampers delivery of chemotherapy. By the combination of different biomaterials, 3D cell culture and computational simulation, a cancer tissue was engineered representing the compression of vasculature in the pancreatic cancer environment. It was studied how fibroblasts mediate this compression and what challenges novel therapeutics have to face to successfully reach the tumor site and penetrate into the cancer microenvironment. Furthermore, it was demonstrated how therapeutics, which are able to reduce mechanical stress within cancer by inhibiting fibroblasts, can potentiate the efficacy of therapeutics to overcome these challenges.

Biography

Marcel Heinrich studied Biomedical Engineering and obtained his M.Sc. cum laude from the University of Twente in 2016, followed by his Ph.D. cum laude from Twente in 2022. During his Ph.D., he was working on developing novel 3D cell culture models to mimic the complex microenvironment in different cancer types, with the aim to better understand the cellular crosstalk between cancer cells and their surrounding as well to investigate novel cancer therapies. So far, Marcel published 16 peer-reviewed papers and received several awards such as the Golden Master award from the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society as well as several presentation awards from different international conferences. Currently he is continuing his work on novel cell culture models as a postdoctoral researcher in the Advanced Organ bioengineering & Therapeutics department in Twente focusing on the crosstalk between cancer cells and the immune system.

Abstract

Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disease that afflicts over 60 million people worldwide. Invasive neurostimulation therapies such as vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) have emerged as important treatment options for the 30% of patients for whom other strategies offer no relief. However, the effects of both VNS and DBS are highly variable across patients with success rates of 30-50%, and the processes that may account for this variation remain under investigation. One way to study this is to characterize the DBS/VNS-targeted brain networks that drive the clinical outcome, which is possible with scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings of epileptic patients during stimulation. I aim to build individualized virtual patients, comprised of personalized computational models and neurophysiological signatures, that have the potential to predict the patients’ unique responses and enable tailored strategies for effective treatment with invasive neuromodulation

Biography

Maria-Carla Piastra studied Applied Mathematics at the University of Genova, Italy. In 2019, she obtained both a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Muenster, Germany, and one in Bioengineering from the University of Genova, Italy. Between 2018 and 2021, she worked as PostDoc in Nijmegen, at the Donders Institute, and in 2021, joined the University of Twente as Assistant Professor in the Clinical Neurophysiology group.

She develops mathematical models to simulate normal and abnormal neuronal activity at different levels. From brain activity measured with scalp and intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) systems to neuronal network activity measured in vitro with microelectrode arrays (MEA) devices. Within this framework, she is involved in several (open-source) software development initiatives. Her main goal is to facilitate translational work between clinic and research, with a particular focus on epilepsy and stroke.