Principal Investigators
Bradley G. Leshnower, MD
Lab Director
Dr. Leshnower is a Professor of Surgery in the Emory School of Medicine, Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Emory University Hospital, Director of Thoracic Aortic Surgery for Emory Healthcare and serves as the Co-Director of the Emory Aortic Center. Dr. Leshnower is an experienced open and endovascular surgeon with expertise in treating patients with thoracic aortic disease and aortic valve disease. His clinical research interests have focused upon patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections. This has led to the development of novel procedures and treatment strategies, and numerous collaborative research efforts ranging from translational research to prospective randomized clinical trials.
Dr. Leshnower’s research efforts on aortic dissection and thoracic aortic aneurysms have been supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and by the American Heart Association since 2021.
Hai Dong, PhD
Investigator
Dr. Hai Dong is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Emory University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from Peking University in 2016. His current research focuses on cardiovascular biomechanics, including biomechanical aortic tissue testing, constitutive cardiovascular models, and aortic growth modeling. His research aims to improve treatments of cardiovascular diseases such as thoracic aortic aneurysm and dissection. In 2022 he was a recipient of the Packard Support Award, in 2023 he received the Frontiers in Biosciences and Bioengineering Family Award and in 2025 he was awarded the American Heart Association Career Development Award.
External Collaborators
Minliang Liu, PhD
Dr. Minliang Liu is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Texas Tech University. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests lie primarily at the intersection of cardiovascular biomechanics, computational modeling, and machine learning. Dr. Liu is an expert at creating fluid structure interaction analysis (FSI) models to study the impact of blood flow upon the aortic wall in aneurysms and dissections. His research is supported by the American Heart Association.
Rudy Gleason, PhD
Dr. Gleason is a Professor of Bioengineering and Mechanics of Materials at Georgia Tech. His current research interests focus upon soft tissue biomechanics and growth and remodeling with particular emphasis on native vascular tissues and tissue engineered constructs. Dr. Gleason’s collaboration with Dr. Leshnower involves the growth and remodeling of post-dissection thoracic aortic aneurysms.
Research Efforts
The Emory Aortic Translational Research Lab is dedicated to understanding the complex interactions between blood flow and the aortic wall in the context of thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections. An improved understanding of this pathophysiology will lead to changes in treatment paradigms and improved clinical outcomes for patients with thoracic aortic disease.
In 2021 Dr. Leshnower was awarded an a National Institutes of Health R01 grant to develop a patient-specific risk stratification model for patients presenting with acute uncomplicated Type B aortic dissection. The goal of this project is to identify patients in the acute phase of aortic dissection who are at high risk for failure of medical therapy that could benefit from endovascular therapy. This project combines the analysis of a large clinical and radiographic database, the use of 4D flow MRI , biomechanical aortic tissue testing, and the development of patient-specific fluid structure interaction models.
Aortic Tissue Bank
The Emory Aortic Tissue Bank is one of the largest biorepositories of aortic tissue in the country. A collaborative effort between Emory University and Georgia Tech, the Tissue Bank contains a collection of over 1000 aortic tissue samples since its inception in 2016
Through partnership with LifeLink of Georgia and with the assistance of Emory Transplant Surgeons, the Tissue Bank also contains more than 100 samples of normal arch and descending thoracic aortic tissue.
Types of Tissue Banked
- Connective Tissue Disorders
- Dissections (acute / chronic)
- Aneurysms
- Normal Aorta
Relevant Publications
Dr. Leshnower and his team have published numerous articles in prestigious scientific journals such as The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, and the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
Cebull HL, Liu M, Piccinelli M, Dong H, Naeem M, Du Y, Oshinski JN, Gleason RL Jr, Elefteriades JA, Leshnower BG. The use of 4-dimensional flow magnetic resonance imaging and fluid structure interaction analysis to predict failure of medical therapy in acute uncomplicated type B aortic dissection. JTCVS Tech. 2024 Jul 5;27:40-44. doi: 10.1016/j.xjtc.2024.06.019. PMID: 39478892; PMCID: PMC11519730.
Dong H, Liu M, Cebull HL, Chhabra A, Zhou Y, Piccinelli M, Oshinski JN, Elefteriades JA, Gleason RL Jr, Leshnower BG. Protective biomechanical and histological changes in the false lumen wall in chronic type B aortic dissection. JTCVS Open. 2024 Nov 30;23:60-68. doi: 10.1016/j.xjon.2024.11.012. PMID: 40061520; PMCID: PMC11883685.
Cebull HL, Oshinski JN. Editorial for "Evaluating a Phase-Specific Approach to Aortic Flow: A 4D Flow MRI Study". J Magn Reson Imaging. 2024 Mar;59(3):1068-1069. doi: 10.1002/jmri.28879. Epub 2023 Jun 28. PMID: 37377168; PMCID: PMC11457003.
Dong H, Liu M, Woodall J, Leshnower BG, Gleason RL Jr. Effect of Nonlinear Hyperelastic Property of Arterial Tissues on the Pulse Wave Velocity Based on the Unified-Fiber-Distribution (UFD) Model. Ann Biomed Eng. 2023 Nov;51(11):2441-2452. doi: 10.1007/s10439-023-03275-1. Epub 2023 Jun 16. PMID: 37326947.
Dong H, Ferruzzi J, Liu M, Brewster LP, Leshnower BG, Gleason RL. Effect of Aging, Sex, and Gene (Fbln5) on Arterial Stiffness of Mice: 20 Weeks Adult Fbln5-knockout Mice Have Older Arteries than 100 Weeks Wild-Type Mice. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2023 Jun 1:2023.05.30.542920. doi: 10.1101/2023.05.30.542920. PMID: 37398425; PMCID: PMC10312538.
Liu M, Liang L, Ismail Y, Dong H, Lou X, Iannucci G, Chen EP, Leshnower BG, Elefteriades JA, Sun W. Computation of a probabilistic and anisotropic failure metric on the aortic wall using a machine learning-based surrogate model. Comput Biol Med. 2021 Oct;137:104794. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104794. Epub 2021 Aug 25. PMID: 34482196.
Liu M, Dong H, Lou X, Iannucci G, Chen EP, Leshnower BG, Sun W. A Novel Anisotropic Failure Criterion With Dispersed Fiber Orientations for Aortic Tissues. J Biomech Eng. 2020 Nov 1;142(11):111002. doi: 10.1115/1.4048029. PMID: 32766773.
Liu M, Liang L, Ismail Y, Dong H, Lou X, Iannucci G, Chen EP, Leshnower BG, Elefteriades JA, Sun W. Computation of a probabilistic and anisotropic failure metric on the aortic wall using a machine learning-based surrogate model. Comput Biol Med. 2021 Oct;137:104794. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104794. Epub 2021 Aug 25. PMID: 34482196.
Liu M, Dong H, Lou X, Iannucci G, Chen EP, Leshnower BG, Sun W. A Novel Anisotropic Failure Criterion With Dispersed Fiber Orientations for Aortic Tissues. J Biomech Eng. 2020 Nov 1;142(11):111002. doi: 10.111
Announcements
2025: Dr. Hai Dong was awarded the American Heart Association Career Development Award.
2024: Dr. Minliang Liu was awarded the American Heart Association Career Development Award
2023: Dr. Hannah Cebull received the Georgia CTSA TL1 Fellowship and is currently funded by an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Award.