Ovijit Chaudhuri
Stanford University, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Cells in the body grow and divide inside a 3D scaffold called the extracellular matrix (ECM), and they can feel how stiff or squishy that scaffold is. Scientists know how cells sense stiffness on flat 2D surfaces, but not how stiffness controls cell division in 3D.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Biophysics
Biology
- Topics
mechanotransduction
matrix viscoelasticity
matrix stiffness
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Determine the biophysical mechanisms by which hydrogel viscoelasticity, stiffness and adhesiveness affect division of fibroblasts, epithelial cells and mesenchymal stem cells, using alginate hydrogels with independently tunable properties.
- Test how mechanosensitive ion channels, which open in response to stretch, and integrins, receptors that grip the matrix, work together to sense matrix viscoelasticity and stiffness and control cell division in 3D culture.
- Map how gene activity and chromatin accessibility respond to matrix mechanics during 3D proliferation using RNA-seq and ATAC-seq with bioinformatics, including pathways that act independently of the regulator YAP.
- Identify new molecular regulators of mechanotransduction and cell division in 3D matrices using genome-wide CRISPR screening.
More about the research
Real tissues are also viscoelastic: like silly putty, they act partly as an elastic solid and partly as a flowing liquid. The team has found that matrix viscoelasticity affects how cells spread, move, divide, differentiate, and express genes. The mechanisms remain unclear, especially for cell division.
Why it matters
This is basic research on how the physical properties of tissues and biomaterials control cell growth. Knowing how stiffness and viscoelasticity drive cell division in 3D could inform the design of biomaterials that support cell growth, and the mechanisms found may help explain other force-sensitive processes relevant to human disease and disability.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Haogang Cai
New York University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Determine what drives spatial effects in receptor clustering and how mechanical force shapes them, using nanoengineered surfaces that place signaling molecules with single-molecule precision.
Sangkyun Cho
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Test in real time whether releasing mechanical load drives cardiac myofibroblasts back toward a quiescent state, using iPSC-derived fibroblast reporter lines with fluorescently tagged marker genes such as CFP-TAGLN in a dynamically softening hydrogel.
Ryan Stowers
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Determine whether cardiomyopathy-driven remodeling of the extracellular matrix alters myocardial viscoelasticity, by mechanically testing human DCM and HCM heart tissue and pig disease-model tissue.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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