Undergraduate Research Assistant - Alison Vander Roest Lab
Current• Successfully maintained stable passaging of iPSCs to cardiomyocytes daily, including media changes, replating, and freezing, while establishing and managing cell banks for both iPSCs and cardiomyocytes (CMs) to support research on heart force generation, propagation, and remodeling• Compared three iPSC differentiation protocols to promote CM growth by immunostaining CMs at various post- differentiation timepoints and assessing alpha and beta myosin expression through image analysis with Cell Profiler• Updated the lab’s standard differentiation protocol based on observed morphology and results, improving efficiency and reliability in generating CMs from iPSCs• Analyzed 20+ batches of human iPSC-derived CMs using qPCR, PCR, and western blot techniques to evaluate gene editing success and provided valuable data for ongoing research projects