BCMaterials invited talk: Manuel Doblaré

Mechanobiology: a new challenge for mechanical engineers

Manuel Doblaré

Group of Applied Mechanics and Bioengineering Aragón Institute of Engineering Research (I3A) - University of Zaragoza Aragón Institute of Health Research Networking Centre on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN)

It is well-known that the structure of living tissues develops by a complex interaction between cells and the surrounding environment controlled by genetic instructions. One of the main factors that influences on this process is the mechanical environment, and thus, structural tissues are optimized in terms of their specific mechanical function. Mechanobiology is the discipline that deals with the cellular response to the stress/strain state including mechanosensation, mechanotransduction and cellular expression. This discipline is becoming increasingly important not only to better understand and predict biological processes as important as remodelling, growth and morphogenesis, differentiation, damage or healing, but also as an essential companion in the new concept of tissue engineering. As any other discipline, mathematical models are the way in which the acquired knowledge is systematized, allowing checking of new hypotheses, tissue long-term behaviour under any type of mechanical condition and understanding the results of experimental tests and the interaction between mechanical and biological processes. All this has motivated the appearance in the last years of many of these models. However, most of them have been only focused on particular aspects or specific biological processes, while their combined analysis requires at least formulating in a general way the interaction between mechanics and cell response while more complex and mechanistic models should also include biochemical substances as well as bioelectrical fields. In this talk, a first formulation that describes from a macroscopic point of view the coupled behaviour of a continuum mixture of cells and different types of extracellular matrices (ECMs) composed by fluid and several solid aggregates. The mechanics of this mixture is coupled with tissue growth, cell proliferation and differentiation and tissue damage. Finally, several particularizations of this global mathematical framework are presented corresponding to bone remodelling, bone fracture healing, tissue engineering and “in vitro” evolution of glioblastoma multiforme.

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Manuel Doblaré   Group of Applied Mechanics and Bioengineering   Aragón Institute of Engineering Research (I3A) - University of Zaragoza   Aragón Institute of Health Research   Networking Centre on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN)   Campus Rio Ebro, Agustín de Betancourt Bldg   María de Luna, s/n.   Zaragoza 50018 (Spain)   Email: mdoblare@unizar.es

Manuel Doblaré is mechanical engineer (University of Seville) and PhD from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He was lecturer and associate professor in Sevilla and Madrid, and, in 1984, he got the chair of Structural Mechanics at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Zaragoza. He was visiting scholar at the universities of Southampton and New York and visiting professor at Stanford. Dr. Doblaré was head of Department, Dean of the School of Engineering, founding director of the Aragón Institute of Engineering Research (> 400 researchers) and Scientific Director of the Spanish Networking Center on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine. From 2011 to 2016, when he moved back to his chair in Zaragoza, Prof. Doblaré was selected as Scientific Director and CEO of Abengoa Research, the Corporate Research Center of Abengoa, a multinational company, world leader in renewable energies and sustainability and managed a R & D budget of >300 Million /year. Prof. Doblaré has published >250 papers in ISI journals and has supervised more than 37 PhD Theses and raised more than 30M€ in projects, private contracts and infrastructure, and promoted the creation of the spin-off companies Ebers Medical Technology and BeonChip that design, fabricate and commercialize bioreactors and microfluidic design respectively and have been awarded with prestigious national and international prizes to innovation. He received the individual prize for excellence in research from the Aragón Government and was distinguished with the “Honoris Causa” Doctorate by the University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania). He was also member of the Advisory Research Council of the Regional Government of Aragón (88-93;02-09), coordinator of the area of Mechanical Engineering of the Spanish Research Evaluation Agency (01-04); member (02-03 and 07-08) and President (08-09) of the engineering committees of the Spanish Commission for Evaluation of Individual Research and member (07-09) of the Spanish Accreditation Commission for Engineering and Architecture. Especially remarkable was his proposal of the Centro Nacional de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina of which he was appointed founder scientific director (07-11). He has been member of the editorial board of prestigious journals in Bioengineering, member of the International Advisory Board in Bioengineering of the Italian Interpolytechnic Doctorate School (07-12) and elected member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Zaragoza (2005), elected  permanent member (2009- ) of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering, elected member of the World Council of Biomechanics (08-20), fellow of European Allianz for Engineering and Biomedicine (EAMBES), scientific advisor of IMDEA Materials and governing council member of University of Sevilla. Dr. Doblaré’s research interests are in computational solid mechanics and multiscale and multiphysics with applications in biomechanics and mechanobiology. In the last years, he has focused his research on model reduction and the combination of machine learning techniques and physical models.