Plenary and Semi-Plenary Lectures
Click here to return to the list of invitees
| Title: |
| Some Applications of Computational Mechanobiology |
| Lecturer: |
| Manuel Doblaré |
| Abstract: |
It is well-known that tissue structure develops by a complex interaction between cells and surrounding environment controlled by genetic instructions. One of the main factors that influences on this process is the mechanical environment, and thus, structural tissues are optimized in terms of their specific mechanical function [1]. Normally, these processes are classified according to their specific target into: remodelling, growth, differentiation, damage or healing models [2].
Remodelling describes the adaptive process by which the tissue modifies its microstructure and hence its mechanical properties according to the mechanical environment that it supports [3]. Growth involves the addition or loss of mass, shaping the organs and adjusting their final dimensions [1,2]. Tissue differentiation describes the differentiation to the various cell types from a non-specialized cell source [1,2]. Finally, partial or total tissue damage is quite common. It can be caused by the sudden appearance of an overload that exceeds tissue strength, or by cyclic loads that gradually accumulate damage at a rate that cannot be repaired by tissue remodelling [4]. After global tissue disruption healing is activated, involving many different cellular events like simultaneous differentiation, growth and remodelling in a combined way [4].
This has motivated the appearance in the last years of some numerical models to better understand the interaction between mechanical and biological processes in developmental biology [1,2,4,5,6]. Most of them have been only focused on particular aspects or specific biological processes, while their combined analysis requires to formulate more general models. In these formulations tissues are described from a macroscopic point of view as a continuum mixture of cells and different types of extracellular matrices (ECMs) composed by fluid and several solid aggregates. In this work, we present a general continuum formulation for tissue growth, differentiation and damage, controlled by the mechanical environment that includes the biological processes associated to each specialized cell population [7]. Finally, several applications are presented related to tissue remodelling and bone fracture healing. |
 Manuel Doblaré was born in Córdoba (Spain) in July, 1956. He got the degree of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of Seville (SU) in 1978. He presented his PhD dissertation in 1981 at the Polytechnique University of Madrid (MPU), getting the Prizes of this University and of the “Artigas Foundation” to the best Thesis in Mechanical Engineering in that year. From 1978 to 1982 he was research assistant and in the period 1982-84 assistant professor of Structural Mechanics at the MPU. In 1984, he was appointed as full professor at the Mechanical Engineering Dept. of the University of Zaragoza (ZU), where he still teaches. He was visiting scholar at the universities of Southampton and New York and visiting professor at Stanford University. Dr. Doblaré has been distinguished with several prizes and a “Honoris Causa” Doctorate by the University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania). He is member of different national and international scientific associations and committees, editor of several journals and elected member of the Royal Academy of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Natural Sciences of Zaragoza. He was head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. Currently, he is the Director of the Aragón Institute of Engineering Research (I3A). Dr. Doblaré’s research interests are in computational solid mechanics with applications to structural integrity, biomechanics and mechanobiology. |
|
|
