Guy Genin
Washington University in St. Louis
Presenting in Track 6: Biomedical & Biotechnology Engineering
Presentation Title: The Physics Of Navigation Failures In Vascular Surgery, And Solutions Inspired By Plant Mechanobiology
Abstract: The standard of care in stroke treatment is to restore blood flow surgically by accessing the site of blockage through the vasculature. The procedure is a race against the clock to deliver surgical tools to this site, with delays of minutes leading to worse long-term outcomes for the patient. We focus on a critical class of navigation failures called "herniation" that can delay surgery by tens of minutes, and that can occur without warning. In these, a curved portion of the intravascular catheter can drop down suddenly, causing the surgeon to lose control of the distal end of the catheter, and often requiring the surgeon to remove the catheter set and repeat the procedure with a new one. We show that these failures of navigation can now be predicted by treating herniation as a mechanical bifurcation, and present classes of design adaptations to catheters that can reduce the likelihood of these bifurcations by mimicking mechanobiological mechanisms present in epidermal cells of plant shoots and roots.
Biography: Guy M. Genin applies fundamental concepts from engineering to control and probe living systems. His work advances surgical techniques, molecular detection, and therapies for inflammation, wound healing, and fibrosis. Genin serves as the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Washington University, with appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery. At Xi'an Jiaotong University, he serves as Thousand Talents Plan Professor of Life Sciences. Genin co-directs the NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechanobiology. He serves on the U.S. Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group's steering committee and the Society of Engineering Science's Board of Directors. A fellow of ASME, AIMBE, IAMBE, and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, Genin is chief engineer of Caeli Vascular, Inc., and CTO of Inflexion Vascular, LLC. He is currently an associate editor of Biophysical Journal. Genin is the recipient of awards including a Research Career Award from the NIH; the Skalak Award and Van Mow Medal from ASME; the Changjiang Scholar Award from the Chinese Ministry of Education; and the Eads Medal from the St. Louis Academy of Science. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Case Western Reserve University and master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard, and completed postdoctoral training at Cambridge and Brown.