Jonathan T. Butcher

About

Professor Jonathan T. Butcher is the Joseph Newton Pew Jr. Professor in Engineering at the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, located in Weill Hall, Room 304. His research focuses on understanding the roles of mechanical forces in shaping cardiovascular morphogenesis and adult disease, with an emphasis on heart valves. His long-term objectives are to utilize developmental paradigms to discover novel disease mechanisms and regenerative strategies. His work encompasses three main research thrusts: cardiovascular developmental mechanobiology, where he investigates the complex engineering that drives embryonic heart and valve formation through novel animal models, in vitro morphogenic organoids, and advanced imaging and computational simulations; developmental paradigms in postnatal valve disease, where he studies cell and tissue changes that mimic developmental phenotypes in diseases such as myxomatous valve disease and valve sclerosis, developing knockout and transgenic mice, tissue models, and bioreactor systems; and heart valve tissue engineering, focusing on engineering living tissue characteristics via 3D tissue printing, creating living valved conduits, and translating embryonic valvular maturation insights into improved engineered heart valves. His research integrates experimental tools, microfabricated mechanobiological test beds, imaging methods, and computational modeling to elucidate local mechanobiological control mechanisms and develop therapeutic strategies.

Research topics

• Biology
• Cell biology
• Medicine
• Biomedical engineering
• Anatomy

Selected publications

• Spatiotemporal single-cell RNA sequencing of developing chicken hearts identifies interplay between cellular differentiation and morphogenesis

  Nature Communications · 2021-03-19 · 208 citations

  articleOpen access

  Single-cell RNA sequencing is a powerful tool to study developmental biology but does not preserve spatial information about tissue morphology and cellular interactions. Here, we combine single-cell and spatial transcriptomics with algorithms for data integration to study the development of the chicken heart from the early to late four-chambered heart stage. We create a census of the diverse cellular lineages in developing hearts, their spatial organization, and their interactions during develop…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inflammatory and Biomechanical Drivers of Endothelial-Interstitial Interactions in Calcific Aortic Valve Disease

  Circulation Research · 2021-04-29 · 108 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Calcific aortic valve disease is dramatically increasing in global burden, yet no therapy exists outside of prosthetic replacement. The increasing proportion of younger and more active patients mandates alternative therapies. Studies suggest a window of opportunity for biologically based diagnostics and therapeutics to alleviate or delay calcific aortic valve disease progression. Advancement, however, has been hampered by limited understanding of the complex mechanisms driving calcific aortic va…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Incorporating nanocrystalline cellulose into a multifunctional hydrogel for heart valve tissue engineering applications

  Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A · 2021-07-13 · 48 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Functional tissue engineered heart valves (TEHV) have been an elusive goal for nearly 30 years. Among the persistent challenges are the requirements for engineered valve leaflets that possess nonlinear elastic tissue biomechanical properties, support quiescent fibroblast phenotype, and resist osteogenic differentiation. Nanocellulose is an attractive tunable biological material that has not been employed to this application. In this study, we fabricated a series of photocrosslinkable co…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inflammation via JAK-STAT/HIF-1α Drives Metabolic Changes in Pentose Phosphate Pathway and Glycolysis That Support Aortic Valve Cell Calcification

  Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology · 2025-05-01 · 11 citations

  article

  BACKGROUND: Inflammation and metabolic reprogramming are hallmarks of cardiovascular disorders, wherein myocardiocytes switch from fatty acids to glucose to yield energy. This has also been found in the myocardium of patients with calcific aortic valve disease, a prevalent disease exhibiting features of inflammatory disease that lacks pharmacological treatments. Therefore, we posited that the analysis of proinflammatory and metabolic mechanisms might give cues to disclose therapeutic targets. ME…

  PublisherDOI

• Leveraging <scp>AI</scp> ‐generated synthetic data to train natural language processing models for qualitative feedback analysis

  Journal of Engineering Education · 2025-08-31 · 3 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Background High‐quality feedback is crucial for academic success, driving student motivation and engagement while research explores effective delivery and student interactions. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly natural language processing (NLP), offer innovative methods for analyzing complex qualitative data such as feedback interactions. Purpose We developed a framework to train sentence transformers using generative AI–created synthetic data to categorize student‐…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21AR070408

  NIH · $399k · 2020

• NIH Grant R21HL118672

  NIH · $405k · 2016

• NIH Grant R01HL128745

  NIH · $1.5M · 2021

Frequent coauthors

• Bin Zhou

  Albert Einstein College of Medicine

  27 shared

• Bin Duan

  University of Nebraska–Lincoln

  26 shared

• Roger R. Markwald

  Medical University of South Carolina

  25 shared

• Debi Turner

  Charles University

  25 shared

• Andrew Recknagel

  Allen Institute

  24 shared

• Russell A. Gould

  Harvard University

  24 shared

• Emily Farrar

  20 shared

• Robert M. Nerem

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  20 shared

Education

• Postdoc, Cell Biology and Anatomy

  Medical University of South Carolina

  2007

• PhD, Mechanical Engineering

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  2004

• BS/MS, Mechanical Engineering

  University of Virginia

  2000

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Fengqi Youh-83
• Stephen B. Popeh-83
• Rebecca J. Barthelmieh-62