September 17, 2022
What it is: In a living organism, all cells constantly experience a variety of mechanical forces. Wherever a force acts, mechanical stress is present. Mechanobiology is the study of how these mechanical forces and subsequent stresses affect living cells and how one can leverage the findings to better simulate in vivo conditions in vitro. Titled the “elephant in the room” (Fritzsche, 2020), this research field is rapidly expanding.
Making use of fluid dynamic principles to exert controlled levels of shear stress on cells, the vitro.one platform is an easy to use, efficient, and integrated starting point for your mechanobiology discoveries.
We have tested the platform for exposing various cells to in vivo like levels of shear stress: podocytes, primary neurons, primary glia, Madin-Darby canine kidney cells (MDCK), Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), Meningothelial cells (MEC) (Kriesi et al., 2019).