Tissue Engineering has applications not just in regenerative medicine but also in driving breakthrough innovations in the alternative proteins industry !
Adhithi Lakshmikanthan, our next pathbreaker, PhD Candidate at University of California (Irvine), works on understanding how heart disease and therapies affect men and women differently.
Adhithi talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about her master’s thesis for which she was tasked with designing porous scaffolds using 3D printing in order to support stem cells differentiating into bone cells.
For students, don’t be afraid to try different things, no matter how diverse those interests are. Fail fast, so you know what you truly enjoy doing !!
Adhithi, Your background?
I grew up all over India and studied in a new city-school every ~2 years due to my dad’s job. My dad worked in HPCL and my mother was a homemaker. I went to CBSE schools everywhere, and loved a wide variety of subjects (Social Studies, English, Biology, Chemistry, Physics… never got over my fear of Math in school though!). I ended up taking PCMB subjects in high school. I played a lot of school and district sports – basketball, table tennis, swimming, volleyball and badminton. I loved reading a lot from when I was a kid, you’d find me reading at least 2 books a week as I was growing up. When I was in school, I wanted to be a doctor, an editor-in-chief, a writer, and an autorickshaw driver. The reason I mention this is, I was always told that it was bad that I didn’t know what I wanted to be. But that’s a very normal and totally normal thing that all kids should hear from adults. Some know from the start, some know later, some change their career when new interests show up … it’s all okay!
What did you do for graduation/post graduation?
I studied Biomedical engineering throughout!
I did my undergrad from VIT University (Biomedical Engineering), MS from Rutgers in New Jersey, USA (Bioengineering with a thesis focus on Tissue Engineering) and am currently doing my PhD from University of California, Irvine (Biomedical Engineering).
What were some of the drivers that influenced me to pursue such an offbeat, unconventional and u career?
One of my professors in VIT was my undergraduate thesis advisor, and he showed me that I can blend my creative side with science and engineering. So, something dry turned into something magical.
I enjoyed that rehabilitation engineering project so much, which led me to want to do my master’s and work in Research & Development (R&D).
Mine was a thesis based BTech degree. My classmate and I worked with a local tailor and our mentor and his collaborators at CMC (Christian Medical College) on a compression system for oedema reduction in trans-tibial amputees during their rehabilitation and recovery period before being fitted with prosthetics. The problem statement given to us was back then gradient based (increasing pressure as we move away from the stump) compression stockings were not cost effective, easily available, or customizable. We were able to address all 3 in that project. What excited me most was merging different fields: fabrics, electronics, clinical and rehabilitation needs. Though it was a simple project, it was my first experience of being in a multi-disciplinary setting.
My undergraduate thesis mentor, my master’s thesis advisor, my boss at MTF Biologics, and my boss and team at Wildtype all played important roles in my career and continue to!
I didn’t know what I wanted when I started. But I tried a lot of things, and that helped me see what I did not want to do.
All my research experiences helped me discover my interests..
I’ve always loved stories. I wanted my work to help improve/understand human health and I also wanted to learn new things to add to the story by doing/creating. Research is perfect for that.
For me sometimes, it ended up being less about the subject, more about the environment, the people and lab culture – because research is a collaborative team game and you want to love the place where you work every day!
How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Or how did you make a transition to a new career? Tell us about your career path.
I worked for a few months at Accenture (campus placement, but I missed the health field) after my undergrad. I started a blog and wrote a lot, and applied for my masters. I applied because my final semester in undergrad had a thesis component, and that’s when I realized how much I enjoyed research for the very first time (I worked on a compression system for oedema reduction in amputees during their rehabilitation time before they are fitted with prosthetics).
Some of my classmates and friends who had already left to pursue their masters/PhD helped me with the process of writing the SOP, taking the GRE and IELTS/TOEFL.
During my undergrad, I did an internship at a hospital, shadowing a biomedical engineer while he ensured functioning of all the equipment.
I talked to a friend of my dad’s who had started a medical sales company and he told me that the reason I didn’t enjoy the internship was probably because I liked the bigger picture and research. In retrospect, it seems simple, but back then it was all so confusing.
In my masters, I worked in different labs (Micro-Electro-Mechanical systems, prosthetics, etc.) before becoming enchanted with Tissue Engineering. I worked on fabricating and validating bone implants.
This was my master’s thesis at Rutgers University. When I began working on this, our lab had made bone scaffolds using a manual process called electrospinning using biodegradable materials that support bone growth when implanted in the body. This process is great for making porous scaffolds but isn’t the most mechanically resilient. I was tasked with designing this porous scaffold using 3D printing and take it through multiple design iterations so we could support stem cells differentiating into bone cells, and also support vascularization because no implant works well without being able to support blood flow (which lets cell get nutrients, toxin removal etc). I was able to treat the 3D printed scaffolds in different ways to maximise their efficiency in differentiating stem cells.
During my masters, I also did a lot of part-time jobs to pay for rent and living expenses.
Working on tissue engineering and bone implants helped me get a co-op in wound care R&D.
These two experiences helped me land a job in San Francisco at Wildtype, using Tissue Engineering to make cell-based Salmon (lab-based meat/alternate protein field).
Wild-Type is a cell based alternate protein company that makes Salmon from cells. The idea is to get cells from Salmon once, multiply cells in Bioreactors (muscle and fat), and use it to make meat in the lab. One way to support initial cell growth is to give it an optimal environment to attach and grow) which is what I predominanty focused on. I started as a Research Associate and left as an Associate Scientist.
All these combined helped me get into the PhD program at University of California, Irvine.
How did you get your first break?
I think my first break was getting a co-op (a long internship) with MTF Biologics in New Jersey while I was working on my master’s thesis. My area of work was in Tissue Engineering, Stem Cells and Biomaterials. I got to work on actual allografts (allografts are tissue grafts from other humans). For example, when a patient comes in with a severe burn injury, they need skin grafts which usually comes from skin donated by deceased people who sign up to donate their organs/tissues upon death. This saves and helps innumerable lives from human tissue,while I worked on synthetic grafts for my thesis. This helped me see the two different scaffold approaches (natural and synthetic) used for tissue regeneration and wound healing.
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?
Challenge 1: My lab experiences as an undergrad were restricted to circuit labs and not beyond the curriculum. Since I wanted to be in R & D, I needed and wanted to maximize time in the lab. I chose a master’s with a thesis option.
Challenge 2: Getting a job as an international student in the US is hard especially in the field of tissue engineering because the number of industry jobs in this field is less, and the funding stipulations restrict hiring decisions. My work in the lab, both in my master’s thesis lab and my co-op at MTF Biologics, as well as the strong recommendations from people I worked with helped so much in getting my first full-time job at Wildtype as a Tissue Engineer.
Challenge 3: I went through different research areas before getting to Tissue Engineering. It’s okay to “fail” and not enjoy things – it helps you find what you truly enjoy.
Where do you work now?
I am doing my PhD in cardiovascular research.
I wanted to add this which might also explain more about the work/field, and other GFI articles will help as well : https://gfi.org/blog/adhithi-lakshmikanthan-wild-type/
What problems do you solve?
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. I am working on understanding how heart disease and therapies affect men and women differently, and why. Hopefully this research can help improve cardiovascular therapy options for both the sexes.
Digital twin technology is also a common term in supply chain for example, but it’s used differently here. I work in a field that’s going towards having cardiovascular digital twins. For example, the two time Olympic marathoner Des Lindes’s heart now has a digital twin. Researchers are using it to understand how an athlete’s heart works, what the range of parameters like pressure and volume are in her heart.
Incredibly, it actually is connected to my previous work in tissue engineering! My tissue engineering experience delved into biomaterials, stem cells, and fabrication/cultivation techniques which also involved tissue growth and remodeling (i.e. How cells/tissues/organs react and respond to different stimuli like environmental factors provided to them). In my current PhD project, with my team, we are able to use computational modeling methods to combine solid mechanics, electrophysiology and systems biology to understand the mechanisms of sex differences on why female patients behave differently than male patients in heart failure disease progression as well as therapy. We do this by creating a digital twin of each patient’s heart to focus on how his/her heart might respond and grow over time.
What skills are required for your role? How did you acquire the skills?
I learnt python and worked on biocomputational models from online and in-person classes. I will also be working with cells, materials, animals, conducting assays and those skills are picked up with laboratory training.
What’s a typical day like?
A typical day could have a mix of research, troubleshooting, reading, writing grants and articles, handling clinical data and brainstorming meetings.
What is it you love about this job?
I get to add on a tool to my skill set that I didn’t have previously, computational modeling. It’s helping me see different ways to optimize and speed up wet lab experimental processes which I spent many years doing in the lab previously.
How does your work benefit society?
Hopefully, my research can help improve cardiovascular therapy options and reduce mortality especially with the life expectancy increasing all over the world.
Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!
At Wild Type, I led my first R&D project on making edible micro-carriers (micro-carriers are one way to multiply cells and since its used for a food product we wanted to use edible carriers instead of the traditional carriers used in the pharmaceutical industry) that were fabricated in-house to enable cell proliferation. The people I worked with were brilliant, and we were able to produce and validate the method in record time. Loved the experience of getting this done!
Your advice to students based on your experience?
Don’t be afraid to try different things, no matter how diverse those interests are. Fail fast, so you know what you truly enjoy doing! But, also remember who got you to where you are, they are your support system.
Future Plans?
I want to continue working on technical projects examining social determinants of health – to understand and improve therapies for all and not just one subset of the population. I really want to help address health inequities by developing inclusive digital technologies.