207 Cell Mechanical Microenvironment

Feng Xu, Xi’an Jiaotong University

Guoyou Huang, Xi’an Jiaotong University

Min Lin, Xi’an Jiaotong University

This symposium mainly focuses on recent advancements and trends in the engineering of the cell mechanical microenvironment for biomedical applications. Native tissues have been reported to have mechanical properties spanning orders of magnitudes, from very compliant (“soft”) in neural tissues to stiff (“hard”) in bone tissues. These mechanical properties, along with viscoelastic variances of moduli and other mechanical cues such as stress/strain fields, constitute the cell mechanical microenvironment. The cell mechanical microenvironment plays a significant role in regulating almost all aspects of cell behaviors, including those involved in tissue and organ development, tissue repair, and disease progression. Numerous biomimetic materials (typically hydrogels) and corresponding fabrication technologies have been developed to engineer the heterogeneous and dynamic three-dimensional (3D) cell mechanical microenvironment. Studies on mechanobiology and cell mechanotransduction (i.e., how cells sense and convert mechanical cues into bioelectrochemical activities) have greatly enriched our knowledge and provided potential molecular targets for mechanotherapy. Consequently, topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: biomimetic materials for engineering the cell mechanical microenvironment; micro/nano technologies for engineering the cell mechanical microenvironment; cell mechanotransduction; engineering the cell mechanical microenvironment for various biomedical applications (e.g., tissue regeneration, pathophysiological study and drug screening based-on in vitro tissue models)

Keywords:  human health, biomechanics

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