Like many Bucknell engineers, Kelsey Boyle ’24, biomedical engineering, is trying to make the world a better place through her research. She, along with guidance from Prof. Olivia Boerman, is spending her summer investigating how gene expression along with the use of ultrasound technology impacts the healing of chronic wounds with hopes it can eventually lead to better treatment.
A chronic wound is one that fails to progress through a normal, orderly and timely sequence of repair, or in which the repair process fails to restore anatomic functional integrity after three months. According to Boyle, people with chronic wounds have a mortality rate of approximately 50 percent, and treatment for Medicare beneficiaries costs tens of billions of dollars per year.
While Boyle will not be directly healing patients this summer, her research can lay the groundwork for advances in patient care.
“I would love it if this can eventually be used in clinical settings, but this summer my goal is to determine if and how much gene expression plays a role in the healing of chronic wounds.” says Boyle. “I hope to publish a paper on my research and present it at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in October.”
Finding and bringing a bunch of people with chronic wounds to Boyle’s first-floor lab in Academic East is not feasible, so she is using human umbilical endothelial cells (HUVEC) derived from the endothelium of umbilical cord veins for her research.
Boyle plans to study five different genes this summer and must do multiple tests on each. Each gene being tested is involved in angiogenesis, which is the formation of new blood vessels. She first grows cells and applies ultrasound through a small transducer to her sample. From these cells, she is able to extract RNA and perform an RT-PCR test for each gene. This test gives a qualitative amount for gene expression in the RNA.
“I’ve never done cell tissue engineering or analysis before,” says Boyle, who started her summer research a little late due to her participation in Bucknell’s ENGR 290 course that provided students the opportunity for a three-week study abroad experience. “I’m learning something new every day, which will benefit me because I want to go into the medical device design industry. I’m excited to continue to learn more.”
