Beth L. Pruitt

About

Dr. Beth L. Pruitt is a Professor of Bioengineering at UC Santa Barbara, where she moved in 2018 to help launch the biological engineering degree program. She served as the founding program director and department chair of the Bioengineering Department. Her research broadly focuses on mechanobiology, specifically the role of mechanical perturbations in the evolution of mechanosignaling, structure, and function, including cell adhesion, cell and matrix remodeling, and downstream genetic and phenotypic changes. Her lab develops technologies to enhance the maturity of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes, manipulate various cell types in micro physiological systems, and make quantitative measurements of cell responses to drugs, mechanical stimuli, or disease mutations. Dr. Pruitt's work spans from designing microtechnologies for small-scale mechanical measurements to investigating how mechanics mediate biological signaling, with an emphasis on reliable, quantitative biophysical measurements to address questions in physiology, cardiology, stem cell biology, and neuroscience.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Engineering ethics
• Engineering
• Social Science
• Genetics
• Medical education
• Biology

Selected publications

• Controlled phage therapy by photothermal ablation of specific bacterial species using gold nanorods targeted by chimeric phages

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 151 citations

  biofilm, in which phanorod irradiation killed bacterial cells while causing minimal damage to epithelial cells. Local temperature and viscosity measurements revealed highly localized and selective ablation of the bacteria. Irradiation of the phanorods also destroyed the phages, preventing replication and reducing potential risks of traditional phage therapy while enabling control over dosing. The phanorod strategy integrates the highly evolved targeting strategies of phages with the photothermal…

  DOI

• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy β-cardiac myosin mutation (P710R) leads to hypercontractility by disrupting super relaxed state

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 80 citations

  Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common inherited form of heart disease, associated with over 1,000 mutations, many in β-cardiac myosin (MYH7). Molecular studies of myosin with different HCM mutations have revealed a diversity of effects on ATPase and load-sensitive rate of detachment from actin. It has been difficult to predict how such diverse molecular effects combine to influence forces at the cellular level and further influence cellular phenotypes. This study focused on the P7…

  DOI

• Field Guide to Traction Force Microscopy

  Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering · 2024-04-01 · 21 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Introduction: Traction force microscopy (TFM) is a widely used technique to measure cell contractility on compliant substrates that mimic the stiffness of human tissues. For every step in a TFM workflow, users make choices which impact the quantitative results, yet many times the rationales and consequences for making these decisions are unclear. We have found few papers which show the complete experimental and mathematical steps of TFM, thus obfuscating the full effects of these decisions on th…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improved Cardiac Performance and Decreased Arrhythmia in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy With Non–β-Blocking R-Enantiomer Carvedilol

  Circulation · 2023-10-18 · 19 citations

  article

  BACKGROUND: Hypercontractility and arrhythmia are key pathophysiologic features of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), the most common inherited heart disease. β-Adrenergic receptor antagonists (β-blockers) are the first-line therapy for HCM. However, β-blockers commonly selected for this disease are often poorly tolerated in patients, where heart-rate reduction and noncardiac effects can lead to reduced cardiac output and fatigue. Mavacamten, myosin ATPase inhibitor recently approved by the US F…

  PublisherDOI

• Tracking single hiPSC-derived cardiomyocyte contractile function using CONTRAX an efficient pipeline for traction force measurement

  Nature Communications · 2024-06-26 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Cardiomyocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CMs) are powerful in vitro models to study the mechanisms underlying cardiomyopathies and cardiotoxicity. Quantification of the contractile function in single hiPSC-CMs at high-throughput and over time is essential to disentangle how cellular mechanisms affect heart function. Here, we present CONTRAX, an open-access, versatile, and streamlined pipeline for quantitative tracking of the contractile dynamics of single hiPSC-CMs…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01EB006745

  NIH · $3.1M · 2016

• Shear Stress Measurement in Liquid Environments Using MEMS Sensor Arrays

  NSF · $391k · 2004–2008

• Effect of Microgravity on Drug Responses Using Engineered Heart Tissues

  NIH · $1.5M · 2018–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Alexandre J. S. Ribeiro

  Gladstone Institutes

  66 shared

• Gaspard Pardon

  Stanford University

  50 shared

• Miriam B. Goodman

  Stanford University

  37 shared

• Joseph C. Wu

  37 shared

• M. Taher A. Saif

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  36 shared

• Martin A. Schmidt

  36 shared

• Kimberly L. Turner

  Washington University in St. Louis

  36 shared

• Reza Ghodssi

  University of Maryland, College Park

  36 shared

Education

• B.S., Mechanical Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

• M.S., Manufacturing Systems Engineering

  Stanford University

• Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering

  Stanford University

Awards & honors

• Elected Fellow of AAAS
• Elected Fellow of BMES
• Elected Fellow of AIMBE
• Elected Fellow of ASME
• Senior Member of IEEE

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara

• Dorit Haneinh-53
• Niels Volkmannh-53
• Michelle O'Malleyh-37