Jaime

Jaime
Everett High School
Everett, MA

Mentor: 
Joanna Lumanas
Cardiovascular Disease Initiative

 

Jaime joined BSSP to investigate how genetics and metabolism intersect in heart disease. Working alongside Dua, Jaime studied cardiomyocytes carrying the APOE4 genetic variant, which has been associated with altered lipid handling and increased cardiovascular risk.

The project examined lipid droplets, the cellular structures used to store fats, and asked how their formation changes when heart cells encounter different metabolic stresses. Jaime helped optimize BODIPY fluorescence staining so that lipid droplets could be clearly visualized and quantified. Through systematic testing, the team identified 20,000 cells per well with 5 µg/mL BODIPY as an effective condition for imaging.

The students then treated APOE4 cardiomyocytes with palmitate and etomoxir and compared responses under normal and glucose-starved conditions. Their workflow combined cell culture, treatment optimization, fluorescent staining, high-content imaging using the Opera Phenix, and quantitative image analysis with CellProfiler.

Their data showed that blocking fatty-acid oxidation with etomoxir promoted lipid droplet accumulation. Starvation produced another striking phenotype: fewer cells remained, while surviving cells displayed increased lipid droplet intensity and area. These findings demonstrated that the optimized imaging system could sensitively detect metabolic changes in APOE4 cardiomyocytes.

Jaime learned how researchers move from fluorescent images to reproducible quantitative measurements and how metabolic disruptions can reveal differences in the way heart cells store and use lipids.

Jaime's work helps establish the experimental foundation needed to compare APOE variants directly. Future studies can use this workflow to determine whether APOE4 heart cells respond differently from APOE2 or APOE3 cells and ultimately help researchers understand how genetic differences influence cardiovascular disease risk.

For Jaime, working through this experimental pipeline made a research career feel much more concrete. He said BSSP taught him what it is like to “work in a real laboratory” and helped him “think more clearly about what [he] wants to pursue in college and beyond.”