New Center for Multiscale and Translational Mechanobiology Announced
Professor Elise Morgan to serve as the inaugural director
By Liz Sheeley
The College of Engineering has established a new Center for Multiscale and Translational Mechanobiology (CMTM) that will facilitate new research projects between faculty from ENG, the College of Arts and Sciences, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and BU Medical School.
Professor Elise Morgan (ME, MSE) will serve as the inaugural director of the CMTM. She was a driving force in establishing the center by securing internal funding from the College and University, and will lead the center with her expertise in mechanobiology.
Mechanobiology, the study of how physical cues affect biological processes, is one of the most untapped, but potentially revolutionary, avenues for advancing the understanding of fundamental mechanisms that drive altered function in disease.
“Classically, in terms of anatomy, we think of our bodies as being composed of different systems,” Morgan says. “We have the cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, the musculoskeletal system, and all of the components of those systems are experiencing mechanical signals.”
She says it’s not clear whether or not those all of those mechanical signals are stimuli for biological processes—but that there’s evidence that in many cases they are.
“But broadly in science and engineering, we tend to study those systems somewhat independently,” she says. “It seems like there was a need to begin to communicate across those silos.”
Morgan’s research focuses on understanding the physical cues that affect the development, adaptation, degeneration and regeneration of bone and cartilage.
“We know that in many cases the mechanical environment plays a role simply because we know if we alter it somehow, then that system changes,” says Morgan. “For instance, astronauts lose bone mass in space because they are no longer exerting the same forces on their bones because of the loss of gravity.”
Researchers can measure the change in force the bone is experiencing, but they can’t yet understand how that change in force is leading to changes in a biological pathway that affects bone mass.
Beyond the collaborative research that the CMTM will facilitate, it will also hold symposium, seminars, and host visiting researchers.
The mission of the CMTM is to serve as the leading nexus for engineering and quantitative methods to understand and control mechanobiology and develop clinically translatable approaches for enhancing quality of life.