Journal cover image by Onur Kilic, Johns Hopkins University, republished by permission of Springer Nature | Nature Biomedical Engineering| July 2019

USF Health’s Stephen Liggett, MD, is a coauthor of the article highlighted on the July 2019 cover of Nature Biomedical Engineering, one of the high-impact Nature journals.

That paper, titled “A microphysiological model of the bronchial airways reveals the interplay of mechanical and biochemical signals in bronchospasm,” was also listed among 25 Most-Viewed Articles published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The most viewed distinction was based on articles ranked by unique page views* for June 30 through July 29, 2019.

Dr. Liggett is vice dean for research, and professor of internal medicine, molecular pharmacology and physiology, and medical engineering at USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.  He was part of a collaborative team, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Yale, which created a microdevice simulating the behavior of bronchial airways to investigate why it is so difficult to successfully treat some asthma patients.

Nature Biomedical Engineering describes its July cover design, using an image by Johns Hopkins University’s Onur Kilic (lead author), as a device simulating “a microphysiological system that recapitulates the mechanochemical environment of the human bronchial airways.” To read more about the research highlighted and its clinical relevance, click here.

“A cover article in Nature Biomedical Engineering is quite hard to come by.  The acceptance rate (for articles) alone is probably less than 10%,” said Robert Frisina, PhD, chair of the USF College of Engineering’s Department of Medical Engineering, where Dr. Liggett holds a joint faculty appointment.  “Outstanding work by Steve, demonstrating we can do great things in biomedical engineering here at USF.”

*Unique page views count as one the total number of article page views by the same user within a defined session.