Creativity@Home - Designer magnetic particle tagging and activation of mechano-sensitive receptors for remote control of cell signalling and behaviour

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A recent major catalyst in aiding us to understand how cells respond to mechanical environment has been the advances in cell and tissue engineering and the regenerative medicine field. With the strong multidisciplinary framework for this field, we have been able to advance the potential for using tissue mechanics in defining how we grow and repair tissues. Alongside this we can ask basic questions about mechanotransduction which allows us to address major questions in this field. Seeking new therapies for regenerative medicine treatments has led to the utilisation of cells, in particular stem cells, for repair and replacement tissues. The use of living cells as a therapy presents several challenges; the most focal one being how to control therapeutic cells in the body. In our lab, we have established 2D and 3D tissue engineering models which allow us to develop therapies for regenerative medicine but also enable us to create more biological models for testing and understanding the role of mechanics in tissue biology and pathology. We have developed magnetic nanoparticle based strategies for tagging cell receptors and controlling cell behaviour and mechnotransduction. This project allows us to research into new multidisciplinary methods for specific magnetic particle tagging of cell mechano-sensitive receptors present internally and externally in a cell.