UT Southwestern Events Calendar

Comutational Biology Seminar

Dr. David Odde,Professor, University of Minnesota

 

Title: Cellular sensing of material stiffness and negative durotaxis

Abstract: The ability of cells to sense the mechanical stiffness of their environment is critical to their function and allows cells to migrate in a stiffness-dependent manner. In his talk, Dr. Odde will describe how they have developed a computational motor-clutch model for the biophysics of cell migration and applied it to glioma cell migration. Whereas an extensive literature across a wide range of cell types demonstrates the phenomenon of durotaxis – the tendency of cells to migrate toward mechanically stiffer environments – we demonstrate that our motor-clutch cell migration model (Bangasser et al., Nat Comm, 2017) predicts “negative durotaxis” – biased migration toward softer environments – which they confirm experimentally for the first time. Also, his team used the model to mechanically phenotype genetically induced glioma mouse models. The biophysical modeling and experiments help point us toward potentially new therapeutic strategies.

Speaker Bio: Dr. David Odde is the Medtronic Professor of Engineering in Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Trained as a chemical engineer at the University of Minnesota and Rutgers University, Dr. Odde joined the newly created Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 1999, where he is a professor and Associate Director for Strategic Research Initiatives in the Institute for Engineering in Medicine. In his research, Dr. Odde’s group builds computer models of cellular and molecular self-assembly and force-generation-dissipation dynamics and tests the models experimentally using digital microscopic imaging of living cells ex vivo and in engineered microenvironments. His group seeks to bring an engineering approach that uses physics-based modeling and analysis to understand, predict, and control disease outcomes. Dr. Odde is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is the Director of the Physical Sciences in Oncology Center at the University of Minnesota, which is focused on modeling the mechanics of cancer cell migration in biologically relevant contexts. 

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  • Bingying Chen

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