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Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Getting the latest healthcare news for you
A Texas A&M grad student's chance encounter with a street accordionist sparked the invention of the Hemadyne — a device that can accurately replicate the heart's complex blood flow waveforms. Published in Nature Communications, the pump kept a living human vessel chip alive for 60 days and outperformed existing pumps in reproducing complex fluid flow. NASA is already eyeing it for space medicine research.
A graduate student's sidewalk inspiration — watching an accordionist play — has led to a potentially game-changing biomedical device. Ankit Kumar and his professor Abhishek Jain, PhD, at Texas A&M University applied the physics of an accordion's bellows to engineer the Hemadyne, a pump capable of faithfully reproducing the heart's intricate blood flow waveforms. Their work was published in Nature Communications.
The Hemadyne converts real patient blood flow data into geometric code (the same language used by 3D printers) to precisely control fluid movement through microphysiological systems (MPS), or "organ-on-a-chip" devices. It even replicates transient diastolic backflow — a reversal in blood flow linked to arterial stiffening and stroke risk — and demonstrated real biological effects on endothelial cell junction proteins.
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Why it matters: Current lab pumps can't capture the full complexity of cardiac blood flow, limiting cardiovascular research and drug testing. The Hemadyne could enable patient-specific "vascular avatars" for clinical trials and even support NASA's studies on how microgravity affects astronaut vascular health.
