CHIMERA seminar with Dr Philip Pearce
06 December 2022, 2:00 pm–3:00 pm
Multi-scale modelling of blood flow in sickle cell disease
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
CHIMERA
Location
-
OnlineZoomZoomZoom
Please note, this event has been rescheduled from the 30th November to the 6th December due to strike action.
Abstract
Pathological biophysical dynamics of red blood cells (RBCs) are a hallmark of various diseases of the blood that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including sickle cell disease (SCD). In SCD, mutated hemoglobin aggregates into fibrils in deoxygenated conditions, increasing effective blood viscosity and eventually causing complete vascular occlusion and death, if left untreated.
Although links between blood rheology and SCD outcomes have been identified, we lack understanding of how the biophysical properties of RBCs lead to pathological alterations in blood flow. This hinders the development of tools to prioritise specific treatment strategies or to clinically monitor patients and identify complications before they manifest physiologically.
In this talk, I will present some recent work on mathematical modelling of SCD across length scales, from kinetic models of hemoglobin fibril polymerisation to continuum models of non-Newtonian blood flow. Our overall aim is to increase our biophysical understanding of SCD, improving our ability to monitor and treat this disease in patients.
About the Speaker
Dr Philip Pearce
at UCL Applied Mathematics
Philip is a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at University College London (UCL) and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Philip started his academic career at the University of Manchester where he completed a PhD in Applied Mathematics, and soon after became an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow. Between 2016 and 2019, Philip was an Instructor in Applied Mathematics at MIT, and then he spent two years as a Theory Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Currently, Philip uses mathematical modelling, often in close collaboration with experimental biologists, to investigate how molecular and genetic processes determine emergent function in complex biological systems (e.g. in cells, cell populations and/or tissues).