“An integrated microfluidic system with engineered blood vessel mimic and skeletal muscle to investigate the relationship between rheumatoid arthritis and atherosclerosis”

Mingzhi Xu, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University, received IFER funding from 2023-2025 for her project, “An integrated microfluidic system with engineered blood vessel mimic and skeletal muscle to investigate the relationship between rheumatoid arthritis and atherosclerosis.” Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease that primarily targets the joints, but also systemically promotes inflammation. Patients with RA have an increased risk of atherosclerosis, the major cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Systemic inflammation plays an important role in atherosclerosis, and autoimmune diseases such as RA accelerate atherosclerosis due to elevated systemic inflammation. Animal models available for either atherosclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis have limitations, with phenotypes that are complicated to produce and take a long time to develop. The goal of Mingzhi’s project is to link tissue engineered blood vessels (TEBV) and engineered skeletal muscle myobundles made with human cells to produce an integrated system. This system will be used to investigate the interaction of blood vessels and muscle in RA to identify therapeutics that lack toxicity and demonstrate efficacy in humans.