Wake Forest Athletics
Albery Part of Research Team That Earned $2 Million Grant
10/6/2020 12:20:00 PM | Women's Soccer, Les Johns
Redshirt sophomore Mia Albery is not only starting games for the Deacs at center back - she's also helping develop a new kind of stent to relieve artery blockages.
Wake Forest women's soccer redshirt sophomore Mia Albery is part of a team working with Dr. Saami Yazdani on a project that has earned a $2 million grant for "Local delivery of smooth muscle cell targeted aptamer to inhibit neointimal growth and accelerate vascular healing."
"When someone gets an artery blocked, a lot of times they will put a metal stent in it," Albery explained. "But one of the problems with that is that the blood can re-occlude, so there will be another blockage or the stent will deform. His research, and what I'm involved in, is coming up with a new kind of stent for the artery."
Also on the team are Wake Forest field hockey junior Laia Vancells and William Chen ('22).
"There are a couple of sectors in this research," Albery said. "The part I'm involved with deals with making a biodegradable stent made out of PLA, which is polylactic acid. Ideally you would put it in the artery, then six to 12 months after that it would degrade. It would help open the artery up, so that the blood would run through it. But it would biodegrade, so you wouldn't have that in your body anymore and you wouldn't have any more blockages.
"It's really exciting. All of us are kind of working with different aspects of it. He tries to combine different disciplines. I'm on the engineering side, while Laia is on the medical chemical side, and William is working on the computer side of things. It's exciting when we meet each week and share what we're doing, what we've read and who we've talked to."
Like all Wake Forest student-athletes, the summer plans changed significantly for Albery with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I started working with Dr. Yazdani last January, getting ready for a summer of research," she said. "I'd had him for class, and we started doing that in the spring semester. So I was going to come back to Wake and be in the lab all summer. But it ended up being closed, so everything was done online."
Getting back with her Wake Forest soccer teammates late this summer was a welcome moment for Albery.
"I came back to Wake in mid-June, living off campus," she said. "Once the whole team got back, we all had to quarantine and test. It's been exciting, because we were off for about five months. Just training with other people has been so much fun. I'm excited about the freshmen and all the energy.
"We all have to do our individual parts by following the protocols. We all really wanted to have a season, so we're all about doing whatever it takes to make that happen."
Albery has one assist so far while starting each game at the center back position.
"I'm hoping I can play as much as possible and have a positive impact on the team," she said.
"It drives the tempo in training, knowing every night we're going to be playing against the absolute best teams in the country."
She's juggling a lot in the fall semester, between class, Wake Forest soccer and participating in the project with Dr. Yazdani.
"There is a lot on my plate, but I'm always better when I'm busy," Albery said. "I keep a pretty strict routine and the team helps with that. We have our set training times every morning. All my soccer things are first thing in the morning, then I can kind of reset and focus on school."
