Plansky Hoang, a graduate student in Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, recently developed a 3D model of a human heart with a team of researchers to test drugs for pregnant women.

The Daily Orange sat down with Hoang to discuss the research and what it could mean for pregnant patients.

The Daily Orange: What are human-induced pluripotent stem cells?

Plansky Hoang: Human-induced pluripotent stem cells are body cells that have been reprogrammed to their stem cells state. Most of the cells in our body now are finalized to their final lineage, and the way we make them induced is that we reprogram them so that they have the capabilities to change into any stem cell type that they want. Induced pluripotent means that we change from the final state back to its stem cell state.

The D.O.: What role do pluripotent stem cells play in your research?

P.H.: What we use them for is to make cardiac or heart tissue. And we can differentiate and change them from stem cells to three dimensional heart tissue.

The D.O.: How does your research benefit pregnant women?

P.H.: During development, your cells aren’t specified yet. Some cells choose to be heart cells, and that’s the early stage of development. And that’s similar to what our research does because we take cells that aren’t specified, and then we specify them so that they’re in that early developing state of cardiac tissue. You know how pregnant women can’t take certain types of medication, and how a lot of medications are prohibited during pregnancy? It’s not necessarily because all medications are bad. It’s because there’s no research on medication safety for pregnant women.

Our model models the early stages of organ development. It doesn’t model mature heart tissue. That’s why we’re associating it with pregnant women. We’re associating it with the early development of the embryo because the cells are still in their early state.

The D.O.: How did you start working on this?

P.H.: I’ve been working on this project for a year now, but (Professor Zhen Ma) was working on it before me so I am continuing his project.

The D.O.: At what step are you guys in your research?

P.H.: Right now, we’re validating it. We’re testing different drugs or medications on these 3D drugs or tissues, and we’ll see how it affects the development of the tissue.

The D.O.: What kinds of things are you noting when you do that?

P.H.: Particularly, the size of the cardiac tissue is different, and the beating behavior is different. Since we’re differentiating different heart cells, they contract and they beat. And with different drugs, we’ve noticed that with the beat rate, their contraction is variable.

The D.O.: Why are looking at this now for pregnant women?

The way we test drugs on development and the way we’ve previously done that is through an animal model. You supply a drug to a pregnant animal and then you assess the development and the birth of those babies. Medicines used to be categorized A, B, C, D and X. Pregnancy category “A” means that those drugs are determined safe to take during pregnancy, and “X” are known drugs that you shouldn’t take and doctors won’t prescribe you if you’re pregnant. In the middle, “B, C and D,” those are inadequate, meaning there wasn’t enough research done on them. And medications used to be labeled with those, but the (United States Food and Drug Administration) removed them because they weren’t accurate. Those labels weren’t accurate because they were based off animal models primarily, and very few human studies.

Published on April 4, 2018 at 10:18 pm