Benjamin D. Matthews

TL;DR: Mechanically active “organ-on-a-chip” microdevices that reconstitute tissue-tissue interfaces critical to organ function may expand the capabilities of cell culture models and provide low-cost alternatives to animal and clinical studies for drug screening and toxicology applications.

TL;DR: The human lung on a microfluidic chip is recreated and shown that it not only mimics lung function in response to IL-2 and mechanical strain but also successfully predicts the activity of a new drug for pulmonary edema.

TL;DR: Cell use multiple mechanisms to sense and respond to static and dynamic changes in the level of mechanical stress applied to integrins, and these responses differed biochemically.

TL;DR: A biomimetic strategy that uses high shear stress caused by vascular narrowing as a targeting mechanism—in the same way platelets do—to deliver drugs to obstructed blood vessels offers a potential new approach for treatment of life-threatening diseases that result from acute vascular occlusion.

TL;DR: It is shown that cyclically stretching capillary endothelial cells adherent to flexible extracellular matrix substrates activates mechanosensitive TRPV4 (transient receptor potential vanilloid 4) ion channels that stimulate phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase–dependent activation and binding of additional β1 integrin receptors, which promotes cytoskeletal remodeling and cell reorientation.