A prominent scholar in the
field of biomedical engineering, Dr. Gary Bowlin is an
associate professor, assistant chair and graduate coordinator
of the Biomedical Engineering Program, and director of
VCU’s Tissue Engineering Laboratory. He also is the
grateful recipient of the Louis S. and Ruth S. Harris Exceptional
Scholar Professorship in Biomedical Engineering.
As an
undergraduate chemical engineering student at Youngstown
State University,
Bowlin was bitten by “the biomedical engineering bug” when he joined
his adviser on a project that focused on finding an alternative to the traditional
kidney dialysis system. With a mother as a nurse, Bowlin jokes that he had the
medical gene in him but he wasn’t really interested in being a health care
provider. He loved to create and build things so he chose a field in engineering. “Biomedical
engineering allows me to help improve [the] quality of life for those in need
of such products, while at the same time being what I’ve always been at
heart, an engineer,” he says.
And a creator he is. He has developed a natural
bandage made out of fibrinogen, a natural compound found in the bloodstream,
that clots blood. The body activates
its clotting mechanism — a cascade of reactions where fibrinogen is broken
down and converted into fibrin — when it’s cut. Fibrin is the meshwork,
the netting. “It’s like throwing a net over the cloth that holds
it together and keeps it from dissolving quickly,” explains Bowlin. That
netting is preparation for the body’s natural healing processes.
To produce
the fibers, Bowlin uses a technique called electrospinning. The process,
similar to making cotton candy, begins with a solution
of fibrinogen
attached
to a nozzle that is then pointed at a metal target in a rotating steel drum.
An electric field is created between the nozzle and the target, and it is
increased gradually until the force of the electric field
overcomes the surface tension
of the solution. That forms a liquid jet that is transformed into a dry fiber
before it reaches the target.
“When the jet comes out, the polymer chains are
all tangled up and help to form the fiber, just like if
you were to pour a boiling pot of spaghetti into
a strainer,” Bowlin explains. “If you let it sit there for
a minute, then grab a piece of spaghetti and try to lift it, a bunch of
them come out together.
The same thing is happening here.”
In addition to the bandage, the
synthetic fibrinogen is the starting point for developing other functional
tissues. The electrospinning of collagen
could create
such things as articular cartilage, which covers the ends of bones in
joints, and intervertebral disks found in the spine.
Already
holding three U.S. patents for the technology he has developed,
Bowlin is internationally renowned for his groundbreaking research in
the fields
of medicine and engineering. The Louis S. and Ruth S. Harris Professorship
allows
him to conduct his research and VCU’s Biomedical Engineering Program,
to gain increased exposure by attending scientific meetings that he otherwise
could
not attend. At those meetings, Bowlin gains knowledge of various other
applications to allow the electrospun structures to aid in developing
other tissues outside
his current area of expertise. The professorship also permits him to
obtain fairly expensive preliminary data in many tissue-engineering applications.
Having that
data is necessary to compete for large research grants from sources such
as the National Institute of Health.
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