Bioengineering tools to study cellular mechanobiology and enable future mechanomedicine

Modern medicine has made astonishing progress leaning on genetic and biochemical research. Nevertheless, treatments are still missing for uncountable conditions, indicating that key areas of human biology are still unknown. In addition to chemical signalling, mechanical perturbations are now recognized to influence cell and tissue function. New therapeutic approaches are expected to emerge in the next decades that target the physical basis of many diseases, including atherosclerosis, asthma, osteoporosis, heart failure, or cancer. Moreover, a clear mechanical footprint is recognisable in many age-related disabilities, like lower back pain and irritable bowel syndrome, where irregular responses to mechanical forces leads to over-activation of cells, sustaining long-term inflammation and fibrosis that consolidate pathology. Nevertheless, to properly leverage the fascinating promise of mechanomedicine, we need to fully understand how single cells respond to mechanical stimuli. In the Cellular Mechanobiology Lab (CML) of the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment of the University of Glasgow we develop correlative approaches where atomic and fluidic force microscopy are combined with fluorescence confocal microscopy to apply controlled forces on single living cells and observe the response in real time. Running projects at the CML include the role of Piezo1 in interpreting viscoelastic cues of the microenvironment, how membrane tension propagates in living cells and the impact of vibrations on stem cell differentiation.