NIH grants $1.91 million to explore the role of circadian rhythms in tissue regeneration

Tick tock: five-year grant from NIH will explore the role of the body clock in tissue engineering – and how to optimise regeneration.

The human internal clock which is responsible for regulating sleep cycles and many other biological functions will be explored as a tool for optimising tissue regeneration.

My take on this: Under a $1.91 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS),?University of Massachusetts?Amherst biomedical engineer and assistant professor Cathal Kearney will research how to improve regenerative tissue engineering by understanding the role our circadian rhythm plays in tissue repair.

Circadian rhythms refer to the body’s 24-hour internal clock that regulates the sleep-wake cycle but also many other important biological functions such as blood pressure and body temperature. Despite its influence on myriad biological pathways, very few studies on tissue repair to date – and none that he’s identified in tissue engineering – have taken the body’s central clock into account, says Kearney, who has been doing tissue engineering research since he was a PhD student.

Currently in tissue engineering, individual cells in a culture will each contain a circadian rhythm, but without careful handling and signaling they rapidly fall out of sync with the other cells in the culture, eliminating the rhythmic processes that would occur in the body. Studies have shown that patients with disrupted rhythms (commonly caused by environmental stressors, like shift work and diseases such as diabetes or obesity) also have poor tissue repair.

Read the full article HERE.

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