Moore Foundation grantees at the Rochester Institute of Technology are investigating how cells and protein molecules respond to stress as they travel through blood vessels.
Understanding changes to cells and proteins during blood flow could help lessen the incidence of cancer metastasis and heart failure, or improve the process of engineering replacement tissues and organs, says Jiandi Wan, an assistant professor of microsystems engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology who is leading the research.
Wan and his team are using fluid dynamics and microfluidics to study blood flow and how cells are affected by shear stress. Normally, stress is thought of as being applied perpendicular to the surface of a material, like pulling a rubber band until it breaks. However, when stress is applied parallel to the surface of a material, it is called shear stress. Friction is a form of shear stress.
By focusing on how biological cells "know" and respond to externally-applied mechanical forces, the team has developed state-of-art experimental models and devices to explore the dynamics of red blood cells, circulating cancer cells and primary erythroid cells, which are red blood cells or their developmental precursors.
"This helps us understand how cells and protein respond to shear stress exerted by blood flow. That is the fundamental question because then you can regulate the blood flow to control cellular and molecular behaviors and by understanding the mechanism of what controls that flow," said Wan. "We can use this information to determine how the blood can bring diseases to other parts of the body, and can we control it? This could have a huge clinical impact — once you have this fundamental understanding."
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