(Press-News.org)
A new study by researchers at the University of Galway and the University of Limerick suggests that electrical stimulation might be essential for tendons to maintain their health, offering fresh possibilities in tendon repair and regeneration.
The research took place at the CÚRAM Research Centre for Medical Devices, funded through Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland, formerly Science Foundation Ireland.
Tendons resist intense mechanical stress, while facilitating force transmission from muscles to bones. They are also piezoelectric, meaning that when they are stretched, they will produce an electric field, which is thought to be important for regulating tendon cell function. However, when injured, tendons offer limited healing, which often leads to chronic pain and disability, thus affecting patient productivity.
In 2023, major tears or traumatic injuries to tendon, ligaments and muscles affected nearly half a million people in full-time employment in the United States.
Recovery from tendon injuries is slow and often requires extensive rehabilitation, which causes nearly two months of lost work-days per injury. Current regenerative medicine for tendon repair has so far failed to recreate tendon cells' native environment, which ultimately hampers their therapeutic potential.
Led by Dr Marc Fernandez-Yague, who completed his PhD while a researcher with CÚRAM at University of Galway, the research team focused on understanding how electrical and mechanical signals work together to control tendon cell function. Traditionally, tendon cells are extremely difficult to culture in the lab as they rapidly and irreversibly lose their tendon-like functions once isolated from the body.
To address these challenges, the team developed a novel cell culture device - a "tympanic piezoelectric bioreactor" that works in a similar way to the human eardrum and which delivered mechanical vibrations and electrical stimuli to tendon cells.
This dual stimulation caused cells to better retain their healthy, tendon-specific properties, while being expanded in the lab, allowing them to be utilized in tissue repair and regeneration approaches.
Dr Fernandez-Yague said: “Our work is rooted in a deep understanding of how cells sense and interact with their environment. Until now, tendon cells are grown in the lab in a specialised device which stretches them to mimic the effects of body movement. However, this approach overlooks that tendon tissues are piezoelectric – they generate electrical signals when subjected to mechanical stress. Our research project engineered a dynamic electrical-mechanical stimulation systems, which provides cells with the specific signals they need to successfully guide their development, thereby recreating key environmental conditions observed during normal tissue formation and repair.”
Dr Manus Biggs, Associate Professor at University of Galway and principal investigator of the study, outlined some wider implications of the research: “While our approach shows great potential for ultimately growing tendon tissues in the lab, it also has significant implications for generating other tissues that respond to dual electrical and mechanical forces, such as cartilage, bone, and even cardiovascular tissues. This study opens up new possibilities for developing therapies that promote tissue reinforcement and offer alternative or complementary strategies to current physical rehabilitation methods.
“We understand that traditional musculoskeletal therapies often rely on physical therapy which provides mechanical signals to the cells of regenerating tissues. In contrast, incorporating electrical stimulation provides greater precision in controlling how cells respond, offering a more effective approaches for applications in regenerative medicine. Critically, tendon piezoelectricity has long been alluded to have physiological functions. This study is one of the first of its kind that shows that piezoelectric signals can regulate cell differentiation and development.”
The full paper is available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202405711
Ends
END
CLEVELAND--University Hospitals Brain Health & Memory Center is now treating patients with KISUNLA™ (donanemab), a Food and Drug Administration-approved medication for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. UH is the only health system in Northeast Ohio currently offering these infusion treatments. Donanemab has shown promise in clinical trials and may be a treatment option for patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease.
“People with Alzheimer’s disease have an abnormal buildup of plaques in their brain ...
Asking children “What does a scientist look like?” now results in more illustrations of women and people of color than decades ago. But do generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools also depict the diversity among scientists? Researchers reporting in the Journal of Chemical Education prompted AI image generators for portraits of chemists. They found that none of the collections accurately represents the gender, racial or disability diversity among real chemists today.
Millions of images are being created by generative AI each day. And the output of these tools is only as good as their algorithms and the initial images used to train ...
When we gaze at nature’s remarkable phenomena, we might feel a mix of awe, curiosity, and determination to understand what we are looking at. That is certainly a common response for MIT’s Alan Lightman, a trained physicist and prolific author of books about physics, science, and our understanding of the world around us.
“One of my favorite quotes from Einstein is to the effect that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious,” Lightman says. “It’s the fundamental emotion that is the cradle of true art and true science.”
Lightman explores those concepts in his latest book, “The ...
Today, Nature and other Nature Portfolio journals published a collection of more than 40 peer-reviewed papers marking a milestone toward researchers’ understanding of the human body in health and disease and the development of the first draft of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA). The Human Cell Atlas is an international community whose mission is to align groups engaged in creating comprehensive reference maps of all human cells — the fundamental units of life — as a basis for understanding human health and for diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is one ...
Rivers and streams serve as critical connectors across vast geographical landscapes, trickling out of tucked-away headwaters and snaking thousands of miles toward oceans and deep seas. These waterways directly impact human and environmental health, agriculture and energy production, and supply the United States with two-thirds of its drinking water. And yet, compared with other larger waterbodies, the microbiology of rivers is relatively understudied.
A Colorado State University-led team of scientists have contributed to changing that — detailing for the first time both broad and specific information ...
The most comprehensive cell map of the human gut to date has been created by combining spatial and single-cell data from 1.6 million cells.
Mapping the cells of the gut can provide us with further insights into what happens in conditions such as bowel cancer and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Using this atlas, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and collaborators uncovered a new role of a specific gut cell, highlighting its contributions to a cycle of inflammation in some individuals, possibly causing pain and distress.
The study, published today (20 November) in Nature, details how the team ...
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have found a molecule that can both help the intestines to heal after damage and suppress tumour growth in colorectal cancer. The discovery could lead to new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer. The results are published in the journal Nature.
Many patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis do not respond to available treatments, highlighting the need to identify novel therapeutic strategies. In a new study published in Nature, researchers propose that promoting ...
About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, postpartum depression (PPD) diagnosis increased significantly across all racial and ethnic groups and body mass index (BMI) categories over the past decade. While rising PPD may reflect improved screening and diagnosis practices, the persistently high rates highlight the need to develop and implement interventions to prevent the condition while expanding efforts to mitigate the impact of PPD on maternal and child health.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Darios Getahun, MD, PhD, ...
About The Study: The findings of this population-based matched cohort study suggest that individuals born preterm were at an increased risk of death from birth until their third and fourth decades of life, with higher risks as gestational age decreased. Some of these associations may have been partly due to underlying health determinants that affected preterm birth and mortality. These findings suggest that preterm birth should be recognized as a risk factor for mortality and could inform preventive strategies.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Asma M. Ahmed, PhD, MD, MPH, email asahmed@wakehealth.edu.
To access ...
New Haven, Conn. — Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of Yale paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction among some dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago helped make it possible for peacocks to strut, penguins to waddle, and turkeys to trot.
“A good way to understand this is to take a look at drumsticks, like the ones people eat on Thanksgiving,” said Armita Manafzadeh, lead author ...
