Biaxial Test System for Biomechanical Testing in Trauma Research and Bioengineering Education

This was an equipment grant to acquire the BioTester Biaxial Test System for mechanical testing of biologic tissues and biomaterials to enable experiments to define and study trauma, injury, pain and novel biomaterials to promote wound healing and relieve pain. Understanding the mechanotransduction mechanisms that drive pain and cellular dysfunction brought about by mechanical tissue loading is a key element contribute to significantly enhancing the prevention and treatment of injury. The test system was essential for advancing studies by providing appropriate loading and data acquisition at a physical scale not otherwise available. In addition to advance experiments and benefiting computational models, it also provided valuable experiences for trainees at the undergraduate and graduate levels introducing them to state-of-the-art techniques and analysis of biomechanics and biomaterials applications. The requested instrumentation catalyzed several existing synergistic research activities in trauma-related injuries and significantly enhanced the research-related education in Bioengineering and Physiology at Penn. This equipment grant facilitated and substantially enhanced several projects defining the mechanotransduction of trauma-induced pain. During the award period alone, many publications were produced see other section, as well as undergraduate and graduate students trained in STEM see other section with this biaxial test system. The results of experiments from this test system have defined thresholds at the cellular level for the first time that relate pain, dysfunction and injury. This was an equipment grant so the most important result is acquiring and installing the equipment that then was used to perform several experiments. Among those are the finding that neural activation is induced at the same strain threshold as that when its surrounding collagen matrix becomes disorganized.