ネットワーク型共同研究拠点を支える 人・環境と物質をつなぐイノベーション創出ダイナミック・アライアンス 研究者データベース

Mechanobiology is an emerging research science that use the integrated knowledge from medical, engineer, cell biology and biomechanics fields to explain how the mechanical signal from cellular microenvironment could regulate the cell functions. We are seeking to understand the mechanism governing normal physiology/pathological conditions of the living cells by developing mechanical substrates to control the cell behaviors such as their directional migration, proliferation or differentiation. Elasticity tunable hydrogenous gelatin gel for cell manipulation is being developed using photocurable styrenated gelatin. The mechanism of cell-substrate interaction is being investigated using molecular biology and biochemistry approaches.

In tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, stem cell is expected to be one of the potential sources for future cell based therapeutic strategies. Our research focuses on the analysis of MSC proteome on gels with different stiffness using 2 dimensional differential in gel analysis. We achieved in demonstrating the significant changes of the major cytoskeketon and other signaling proteins in respond to substrate elasticity. This finding provided significant impact on the designing of biomaterials to control stem cell fate. For the aspect of cell migration, we successfully fabricated the soft band patterned gels that induced a strong mechanorepellent effect on cell migration. This mechanical substrate is useful for the future development of cell separation devices based on the variability in the mechanical responsiveness of the different cell types.