By Isabella Schutlz
NKyTribune reporter
Thomas More University alumnus Noah Francis is researching how doctors attend to heart transplant patients.
During the summer of 2025, Francis interned at The Christ Hospital in the Lindner Research Center division. There he met two doctors, Dr. Robert Dowling and Dr. Geeha Bhat, who guided him throughout the summer.
For the first two weeks of his internship, he did not start out shadowing doctors and being a part of the front lines. He began by reading various articles and learning the literature on heart transplant therapies.
Once he started with more hands-on work, he took what he read and applied it to real-life opportunities and never looked back.
Francis specifically worked with candidates and recipients of heart transplants in the heart transplant program and in the cardiovascular intensive care unit. Through the interactions and observations he had with patients, he noticed that The Christ Hospital used two different forms of technology called a temporary microaxial flow pump and durable left ventricular assist devices.
These devices help the body pump blood to the rest of the body when the heart is failing.
“There’s durable LV ADS, and then there’s a microaxial flow pump, which is more of a temporary device,” said Francis. “These durable LV ADs are great because they usually last a longer period of time, but there are some heart transplant recipients who become sensitized to a donor graft when bridged to the transplant by a durable LV AD. So the heart transplant may not be successful long term…. What we did was analyze if the temporary device, the microaxial flow pump called an Impella 5.5, had a similar outcome.”
Through the rest of the internship and research, Francis had the chance to look at human hearts up close, even holding ones that were extracted.
He went to finalize his research towards the end of the summer, finding that the Impella 5.5 microaxial flow pump and donor graft worked well together.
“What our research found was that it’s very rare for a heart transplant recipient to be sensitized to a donor graft when they’re bridged with the Impella 5.5,” said Francis.
After his internship, Francis created a poster and an abstract that he later presented at the Thomas More University Student Research Forum in April of 2026. He later submitted the poster and abstract to the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation for publication. In addition, due to Christ Hospital’s reputation in their cardiovascular program with heart transplants, Francis had the opportunity to present at the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation in Toronto.
“We sent in an abstract for it, and it got accepted in December. So, in April, I was able to go to Toronto for four days and present my poster,” said Francis. “I was standing next to a third-year general surgery resident, so it was really cool just to be an undergrad at this international conference with all these residents and physicians.”
Francis credited the hard work and reputation of the heart transplant program at The Christ Hospital for the mentorship and guidance, and was especially grateful to the Lindner Research Center for the opportunity to attend ISHLT 2026.
Next, Francis plans to draw on these experiences as he enters his first year of medical school.
For more information about Noah Francis and what he learned from ISHLT 2026, click
here: An Undergraduate’s Perspective from ISHLT.