Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering. Foreword.

摘要

One fundamental property of living tissues is their ability of adaptation to environment and particularly to mechanicals stresses related to environment or to movement (external pressure, blood flow on endothelial cells, pressure on bone or cartilage related to walking, etc.). Today, it is accepted that mechanical forces can modify the biological behaviour of cells by affecting their metabolism, secretion of autocrin factors, phenotype, etc., and the modifications observed are now considered as determinant for the understanding of pathophysiological processes. Although numerous studies have been performed on these topics, the mechanisms of transduction from a mechanical signal to physiological responses or gene expression in cells remain unclear.