Event
BIOE Seminar: Strokes with sickle cell disease: Dyn. interplay between biomech. and biochem. stimuli
Friday, February 27, 2026
9:00 a.m.
A. James Clark Hall, Room #2121
Ian White
ianwhite@umd.edu
Manu Platt
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Strokes with sickle cell disease: Dynamic interplay between biomechanical and biochemical stimuli
Abstract
Of children born with sickle cell disease, if left untreated, 11% will have a major stroke by age 16, and 30-35% will have a silent stroke impairing cognitive abilities. Later in life, risk for hemorrhagic stroke increases, suggesting an age-related component to arterial damage. Significantly higher velocities measured with transcranial Doppler in cerebral arteries implicates children at risk for strokes with disturbed cerebral hemodynamics. Cathepsins are a family of proteases containing the most potent human elastases and collagenases that we have shown to be upregulated by disturbed blood flow and by inflammatory stimuli, known to be elevated in sickle cell disease. It is unclear, however, how biomechanical and biochemical stimuli integrate to accelerate pathological remodeling of large arteries in these children. We will present our multiscale approach and results demonstrating these links between disturbed blood flow and chronic inflammation due to sickle cell disease, from the cellular level to transgenic animal models up through human computational fluid dynamics to identify new targets to prevent this accelerated artery damage affecting those born with this genetic disease and aging related implications, and show the effect of translational approaches such as curative bone marrow transplants to protect the vasculature of people living with sickle cell disease.
Bio
Dr. Manu Platt became the inaugural director of the NIH-wide Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA Center) housed within NIBIB, as a new NIH campus model for accelerating technology-driven interdisciplinary research and clinical translation and to bring engineering, clinicians, and basic scientists together in February 2023. Dr. Manu Platt earned his B.S. in Biology from Morehouse College and Ph.D. from Georgia Tech/Emory in Biomedical Engineering. After a postdoc at MIT, he returned to Georgia Tech/Emory’s joint department as an Assistant Professor where he worked up to promotion to full Professor and was on faculty there for 13 years prior to joining the NIH. Dr. Platt is a tenured, Senior Investigator in NIBIB, and Head of the MATRICES Lab (Mechanics and Tissue Remodeling In Computational & Experimental Systems). His research program focuses on proteolytic mechanisms of disease, translational approaches to reduce strokes in people affected by sickle cell disease, and harnessing proteolytic networks and systems biology tools to predict disease progression. Among other awards, Dr. Platt was awarded the Biomedical Engineering Society Diversity Award, is a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Fellow of Biomedical Engineering Society, the Root 100 in 2019, and AAAS Mentor Award in 2021.
