Final Report Summary - MECHANOBIO (Finite element simulations of mechanobiology in tissue engineering) Mechanobiology is the study of the effect of mechanical stimuli on the biological response. In this project new experimental and computational methods were developed to advance our understanding of mechanobiology in order to make significant progress in the field of tissue engineering. One of the key findings of this project is that biomaterial scaffolds that are meant to have a regular architecture and therefore provide a repeatable three dimensional substrate for tissue engineering are far more variable than expected. This has important consequences on the reproducibility and variability of in vitro experimental tests. Novel computational studies have been able to quantify the effect of such variability on the local mechanical stimuli perceived by the cells. In addition new computational models were able to predict the spatial and temporal distribution of cells within the porous scaffold which is critical for an adequate cell culture and formation of extra cellular matrix within the scaffold. In vitro cell culture experiments have indicated that cells were viable within the scaffolds for a long period (up to 4 weeks). In order to correlate the cell response with the external stimuli applied on the scaffold, a multi scale computational model was developed to simulate the interaction between the macroscopic mechanical stimuli applied on the scaffold with the local microscopic stimuli sensed by the cells and transmitted through the cytoskeleton of the cell. For the first time the local mechanical stimuli acting on the cells in a three dimensional scaffold was calculated in a sample-specific manner and directly correlated with in vitro cell culture.
