This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to establish the relative contribution of three distinct mechanisms in improvement of damaged bone tissue mechanical properties. The three mechanisms evaluated are: (a) changes in whole bone structure by a process termed modeling, (b) replacement of damaged tissue with newly formed intact tissue by a process termed remodeling, and (c) repair by cells embedded in bone termed "osteocytes". These three mechanisms are expected to improve mechanical properties of damaged bone at the mm-scale, micro-scale and nano-scale over periods of days, weeks, and months, respectively. Deliverables include the development of a novel image correlation technique to determine strains within bone, development of analytical and computational models validated using experiments to analyze the relative importance of the three distinct repair mechanisms, and the development of new courses to educate and provide research experiences to students and high-school teachers.
If successful, the results of this research will provide a fundamental understanding of the hierarchies of repair of damaged bone at different length- and time- scales. This research will provide insight into a novel mechanism that can contribute towards substantial improvement of damaged bone material properties, i.e. the repair process mediated by osteocytes. These studies will lead to knowledge regarding dynamic factors that affect bone quality, while providing another cellular repair mechanism that can be targeted by pharmaceuticals to reduce fracture risk. Graduate and undergraduate student training will be provided and research results incorporated into classes. In addition, the PI will provide classroom instruction in conjunction with laboratory research experiences to broaden participation by minorities, high-school students and K-12 teachers.
