Award details

Growth Form and Function: the Mathematics of 3D Tissue Morphogenesis and Regenerative Medicine

Reference	BB/D008522/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor John King
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Lee Buttery, Professor Helen Byrne, Professor Stephen Hill, Professor Oliver E Jensen, Professor Markus Owen, Professor Felicity Rose, Professor Kevin Shakesheff, Professor Sarah Waters
Institution	University of Nottingham
Department	Sch of Mathematical Sciences
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	1,184,107
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	09/08/2006
End date	08/08/2011
Duration	60 months

Abstract

The biology underlying regenerative medicine is inherently complex, with multiple interacting mechanisms controlling the behaviour of individual cells and the tissues they constitute. The level of complexity of this nascent field offers massive opportunities for mathematically-focussed systems-biology studies: such approaches have a key role to play in systematically uncovering the behaviour of systems whose understanding would typically defy intuition alone. The resulting mathematics will also be of significant interest in its own right, requiring the development of, inter alia, multiscale models involving genetic networks and their implications for cell fate, cross-talk between distinct intracellular signalling pathways, intercellular signalling (including mechanotransduction) within mixed populations of cells, and tissue growth and biomechanics. The proposed research will involve four multidisciplinary strands, three of which will focus primarily on single-scale phenomena, specifically (subcellular) cell-signalling networks, (cell-scale) behaviour of stems cells and (tissue-scale) organisation of aggregates of cells. There is significant and crucial interplay between the different scales and the final strand will involve the integration of these results into a widely-applicable modelling framework, as well as the training of project participants in appropriate cross-disciplinary skills. Testing of the theoretical predictions against experimental data will form a central part of every component of the research programme.

Summary

Recent advances in regenerative medicine promise major breakthroughs for healthcare and in the understanding of cell and tissue function. Moreover, the field provokes a host of important systems-biology questions that raise formidable challenges at the forefront of current developments in mathematics. This proposal seeks to capitalise on areas of world-class expertise within the University of Nottingham (in mathematical medicine, cell signalling, tissue engineering and stem-cell biology) to establish an internationally-leading group equipped to address these challenges. The investigations that the research programme will pursue will seek to further the understanding of the mechanisms by which cells communicate with one another, and of how this communication influences both the behaviour of individual cells and the manner in which aggregates of cells assemble and function. The results will have implications for a wide range of topics of great current importance, including for stem-cell behaviour and for the generation of gut tissue and of bone. The integration of this work within the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Nottingham should generate enormous added value, producing powerful computational tools whose range of application, for example in providing insight into experimentally or ethically inaccessible in vivo systems, will be immense.

Committee	Closed Committee - Engineering & Biological Systems (EBS)
Research Topics	Regenerative Biology, Stem Cells, Systems Biology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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