Elsa Tanré
Master’s Student

Biological and Biomedical Engineering

Email: elsa.tanre@mail.mcgill.ca

LinkedIn

Education Background:

École Polytechnique - "Cycle Ingénieur": Master of Engineering - Majors: Biomechanics and Biophysics (2023)

Favourite Lab Equipment:

SPR

“Do you wanna go for lunch?”
— Elsa Tanré

Research Project and Interests:

Pancreatic islets transplantation is a promising treatment for patients with type 1 diabetes. It reduces the need for exogenous insulin and improves glycemic control in the most severely affected patients. During this surgery, islets are perfused into the liver parenchyma via the portal vein, which is a hypoxic environment. Moreover, the technique used to isolate islets from donors disrupts intra-islet vascularization. As islets are highly vascularized and therefore enriched in O2 in the pancreas, this hypoxia results in a substantial loss of islet viability after transplantation. Recovery of islet function therefore depends on the re-establishment of new vessels within the islet grafts.

My project aims to mimic pancreatic cells revascularization after transplantation using a high throughput commercially available microfluidic chip. With this platform, we should be able to have a better understanding of the crosstalk between donor ß-cells and patient endothelial cells promoting revascularization of transplanted islets. It would have the potential to be a screening platform for angiogenesis promoting factors and could be used by other lab members to assess in vitro vascularization and functionality of their engineered pancreatic islets.

  • International Finalist of the McCall MacBain Scholarship ($20,000) (2023)

    ‘Prix du stage de recherche de l’École Polytechnique’– Prize for my research work at TU Delft

    Winner of the Franco-Dutch Éole scholarship – for my research work at TU Delft

  • Peer-Reviewed Articles:

    Elsa Tanré, Katerina Carayannis, Isabella Braga, Jean Pierre Abdallah & Phoebe Friesen (2024) Is the Right to a Healthy Environment Enough? Reckoning with a History of Failures in Chemical Valley, The American Journal of Bioethics, 24:3, 28-30, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2024.2303136

  • Research assistant in cancer spheroid rheology, TU Delft (March 2023 - August 2023; Delft, The Netherlands)
    Worked on the rheology of cancer spheroids deformed in a constricted microfluidic channel

    Lab research project on the mechanics of trichomes in tomato plants in collaboration with the LadHyX and INRAE (September 2022 - March 2023; Palaiseau and Versailles, France)
    Developed a micromanipulation and microdissection protocol to collect the trichomes’ cavities liquid for chemical analysis and measured the trichome's head rupture force using a calibrated micropipette

    Research assistant in microphysiological systems, Transgene (June 2022 - August 2022; Strasbourg, France)
    Contributed to setting up a tumor-on-chip microfluidic model to assess oncolytic virus