Atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular disease causes nearly one-third of all deaths in the world. Unfortunately, atherosclerosis commonly remains asymptomatic for decades, and is properly diagnosed only after a severe, life-threatening cardiac event. Thus, a portable, low‐cost tattoo‐based biosensor for the non‐invasive self‐diagnosis and quantification of atherosclerosis was developed.

Osteosarcoma, a bone tumor of childhood, is lethal when unresponsive to chemotherapy. ER stress response, a cell survival mechanism that is triggered upon exposure to stressors such as chemotherapy, is one of the ways a tumor becomes resistant to chemotherapy. This project explores novel methods of producing a noncytotoxic EGFP-ATF6 construct to signal Endoplasmic Reticulum stress response.