Biorheology 39 (2002) 5–10 5

IOS Press

From biomechanics to mechanobiology

Abstract. Biomechanics can be defined as the application of mechanical concepts to the living world, and various fields of
research have been developed such as the mechanics of movement, ergonomics, the mechanical properties of cells and tissues,
and the relationship between physiology and applied forces. In this paper, the authors give, through several examples, an outline
of these approaches and their potential biomedical applications, as in tissue remodelling, cell and tissue engineering and the
development of biotissues.
Keywords: Mechanobiology, biomechanics, stress, cell, tissue, remodelling

“Bold ideas, unjustified expectations and speculations constitute our only means for comprehending
nature” K. Kopper

1. Biomechanics: What definitions?

“Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler” Albert Einstein

Etymologically, biomechanics may be defined as mechanics applied to the living world. However,
this definition is too vast and imprecise. It is also limiting, because it does not include physiological or
pathological effects induced by the application of mechanical forces. Three approaches (more or less
complete) allow us to define the fields of biomechanics.
The first one proposes to find, by application of mechanical laws, solutions to problems in medicine,
biology, ergonomics and athletics.
The second one envisages studies of the mechanical properties of cells and tissues in considering the
complexity of the structures being studied, for example, the properties of cardiac muscle, blood vessels
and blood in the microcirculation.
The third one, more recent and no doubt more integrative, is interested not only in the mechanical
properties of objects being studied through their structures, but also in their biological functions and in
physiopathological consequences. This approach demands not only the resolution of fundamental prob-
lems and the development of models, but also the most recent knowledge in molecular biology, genomics
and cell biology. This new approach which seems to be quite promising for its potential applications in
cell and tissue engineering, can be called “mechanobiology”.
*
Address for correspondence: Prof. J.-F. Stoltz, Cell and Tissue Engineering and Mechanics, LEMTA - UMR 7563 CNRS-
INPL-UHP and IFR 111 Bioengineering CNRS-UHP-INPL-CHU, Faculty of Medicine, Brabois, 54500 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy,
France. Tel.: +33 3 83 59 26 41 / +33 3 83 15 37 79; Fax: +33 3 83 59 26 43 / +33 3 83 15 37 56; E-mail: [email protected]
nancy.fr, [email protected].

0006-355X/02/$8.00  2002 – IOS Press. All rights reserved

2. Biomechanics: An old history but a modern science

“. . . mechanical science is of all the noblest and most useful, seeing that by means of this all animate
bodies which have movement perform all their action.” Leonardo da Vinci

Throughout the ages, mankind has exhibited a strong interest in explaining the behaviour of living
bodies, no doubt because of the importance of the challenge. Today the development of biomechanics,
evoked by Aristotle (384–322 BC) in his work “De motus animalium”, requires complementary research
in physics, chemistry, mechanics, biology, medicine and surgery. In fact, it is very difficult to imagine a
theoretical approach without any reference to experiments.
Historically we can distinguish different phases in the development of biomechanics, just as in any
other scientific domain. Over more than 20 centuries the studies in biomechanics remained descriptive.
Only with the evolution of sciences in 17th and 18th centuries did quantitative approaches and the first
applications touching on instrumentation, and the concepts of implantable biomaterials and ergonomics
come into being. The revolution of knowledge in biology brought about by genetics and molecular biol-
ogy at the end of the 20th century, and recent progress in physical instrumentation such as atomic force
microscopy, confocal fluorescence microscopy and laser tweezers to name a few, has again raised interest
for a new biomechanics and its applications as in biotissue engineering and cell and tissue therapy.
Great names illuminate the history of biomechanics. Without being exhaustive, one can cite Aristotle’s
Treatise on the movement of animals, Archimedes (287–212 BC), and Galien on anatomy. These people
were without any doubt the first biomechanicians.
The Renaissance was one of the most prosperous periods for the sciences. There was Leonardo da
Vinci (1452–1519) and his work on human body movement, Galileo (1564–1642), a physician before
being a physicist, William Harvey (1578–1658) and his fundamental work on blood circulation, who
was also the first to pose the problem of microcirculation when he wrote “How does the blood manage
to traverse the porosities of the flesh on its way from arteries to veins?”
The 17th and 18th centuries were particularly rich in works on physiomechanics. Malpighi (1628–
1694) described the capillaries and red blood cells (at the beginning confused with fat particles), van
Leeuwenhoek who completed the work of Malpighi, and Holes (1677–1761) who measured blood pres-
sure.
It was in 19th century that the first physio-mechanical and rheological approaches were described.
Thus, Jean Marie Léonard Poiseuille (1799–1869) can be considered as one of the pioneers of the modern
physiomechanics. It was on the basis of Poiseuille’s experiments that Hagen proposed the classical law
on flow in a small circular tube which has generally been used in textbooks of physiology to describe the
microcirculation. These studies constitute the beginning of almost one century of research in biorheology
and biomechanics, and show the complexity of biological systems, in particular that of blood.
The term biomechanics appears to have been used for the first time in 1887 by M. Benedikt (Über
Mathematische Morphologie und Biomechanik). Among the outstanding achievements of this period, we
can cite the work of Wolff on the adaptability of a bone tissue, Fåhraeus on microcirculation, Bernstein
on movement, and more recently, the work of Alan Burton, Al Copley, George Scott-Blair, Syoten Oka,
Alex Silberberg, Gustav Born, Yuan-cheng Fung, Richard Skalak, Shu Chien, Van Mow, Savio Woo, etc.
Finally, the discovery of some important physiological mechanisms (Vane and Moncada for the
prostaglandins, and Furchgott for nitric oxide, both works crowned by Nobel prizes) allows us to better
understand the role of local mechanical stresses on cell physiology and tissue remodelling.
 J.-F. Stoltz and X. Wang / From biomechanics to mechanobiology 7

This brief historical review covering the last 25 centuries shows the evolution of Aristotle’s initial
preoccupation, which was reconsidered during the centuries leading to the modern concept of bioengi-
neering.

3. Classical biomechanics: Movement and ergonomics

The analysis of bodily motion and its modelling helps us not only to understand the movement of
different structures and to design machines to test implantable materials, but also to improve the phys-
ical performance of organs through a better understanding of their limitations. Such a biomechanical
approach plays an important role, for example, in the re-establishment of motor functions through un-
derstanding musculoskeletal problems, and in the redistribution of stresses by using a plantary orthesis
to re-establish posture equilibrium. In the workplace, biomechanics touches especially on ergonomics as
in the optimisation of work stations. This widely employed biomechanical approach brings together an
important scientific community around sports medicine and the technology of healthcare (readaptation,
implantable prosthesis, surgery).

4. Tissue and cell mechanics: Physiological models

In the second half of the 20th century, biomechanics was applied to explain and to model the behaviour
of organs, tissues, and more recently, cells. It is not surprising that these developments have been slow,
because a fluid or a Hookean solid is generally an abstraction when we consider the behaviour of a tissue
or a cell. Thus we have long known that blood is a non-Newtonian fluid, but research of physiologically
acceptable models has gone beyond the classical knowledge on the behaviour of colloidal suspensions.

4.1. Necessity of models

“Good mathematical models don’t start with the mathematics, but with a deep study of certain natural
phenomena.” Stephen Smale (1930)

The extremely complex biological systems present different types of heterogeneity. On the one hand,
there are different shapes, dimensions, and constitutive elements; on the other hand, there is variability
in time and in space. But through an appropriate selection of biological parameters of a system to be
studied, the contribution of mechanics to the understanding of the physiology of organs, tissues, and
cells has been demonstrated. For example in hemomechanics, the particulate nature of blood, a complex
suspension of deformable and non-spherical particles, and of its vascular interface have been considered
in order to understand complex blood flow in the microcirculation, and mass transfer in the capillary
circulation. In large vessels, the role of local singular flows at bifurcations, stenoses and aneurysms
have been considered in order to understand the occurrence of the pathological processes of thrombosis
and atherosclerosis. Certainly the heterogeneity of scale must also be considered in hemomechanics
or in studies of other fluids and tissues. An organ is macroscopic compared to that of its constitutive
cells which in their turn are dimensionally different form their constitutive macromolecules or their
environmental matrix components.
These problems of scale and structure, known to be fundamental since the 1960s, are inseparable from
reliable biomechanical approaches which would permit us to link molecules to microscale structures and
8 J.-F. Stoltz and X. Wang / From biomechanics to mechanobiology

to entire tissues. For example, the work of Alan Burton (1959) on enzymatic digestion of arterial tissue
helped to elucidate the role of vascular matrix components (elastin and collagen) on its mechanical
properties.
According to Fung, research in biomechanics needs the integration of different data:
– Detailed structure of tissue and its matrix;
– Morphometric data on constitutive elements;
– Knowledge of mechanical properties of the constitutive elements and of their structure with and
without loading.
It is in this spirit that studies have been developed on pulmonary parenchyma, on heart and blood vessels,
and on cartilage and bone.

4.2. Cell mechanics: A developing field

Basically, all tissues and organs are composed of assemblages of cells. Experimental studies of their
mechanical properties remain a delicate problem. Recent developments of non or little invasive physical
techniques such as the cell scanner, biphotonic confocal microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, laser
tweezers, and magnetocytometry, permits reliable measurements in cell mechanics to be made. We refer
to measurements of cell aggregation and adhesion, local micromechanical behaviour, the effects of the
cell cycle and division, and the phenomenon of polarisation.

5. Mechanobiology, mechanotransduction and tissue remodelling

Cells of the living body are always exposed to mechanical stresses which can vary from several Pa
(shear stress at the vessel wall) to millions of Pa (stress on hip cartilage). Only very recently has it
been admitted that these stresses can influence all organ and cell functions (physiology, synthesis, gene
expression), just as biochemical factors do.
One of the early observations which remained forgotten for a long time is that of Wolff, a German
surgeon, in 1892 on bone adaptability. He wrote “every change in the form and function of bone or of
their functions alone is followed by certain definitive changes in their internal architecture and equally
definitive secondary alterations in their external conformation in accordance with mathematical laws.”
Thus, he defined the phenomenon of today’s well known tissue remodelling.
In fact, cell mechanics, being at the interface of physics and biology, has experienced a conceptual
revolution in the last 20 years accompanied by the development of molecular biology, genomics, and
also bioengineering, with the possibility of measuring forces of the order of pico-Newtons and deforma-
tions of the order of nanometers. We are now capable of investigating the relationships between local
mechanical parameters and cell functions (the concept of mechanobiology). It has been shown that most
cells are not only sensitive to mechanical forces in their environment, but also to the origin and history
of the mechanical loading. Although the biological effects of mechanical forces on certain cells are rel-
atively well described, the mechanisms involved in these phenomena still remain unclear. In fact, how
does one explain the passage from a mechanical stimulus to a physiological process as in the secretion
and expression of a receptor, or activation of a gene, knowing that the effects are not always the same on
different cell types, even for the same function? Conceptually, it is accepted today that these phenomena
take place in 4 steps:
 J.-F. Stoltz and X. Wang / From biomechanics to mechanobiology 9

1. Mechanical coupling, which generally implies the transformation of applied forces into detectable
stimuli by cells or the induction of a physical phenomenon. For example, pressure on a bone can
induce a fluid flow in the canicular system and an electrokinetic potential.
2. Mechanotransduction corresponding to the action of induced stimuli on specific structures. Today,
different hypotheses have been proposed and they constitute the subject of a large number of studies
either in mechanics or in biology, such as cytoskeleton restructuring, specific receptor localization
and receptors related to functional proteins (G protein, ionic channels, existence of mechanosensi-
tive elements).
3. Signal transduction, which means the passage of intracellular physiological signals.
4. Cell response including gene regulation, release of autocrine or paracrine factors and specific re-
ceptor expression.
It should be noted that although steps 3 and 4 have been well elucidated for certain cell types and func-
tions, the understanding of steps 1 and 2 still needs the development of models and specific experimental
approaches for every cell type studied.

6. Cell and tissue engineering: Emergent technology and industry

At the present time, research in mechanobiology finds applications mainly in vascular, cardiac and
osteoarticular fields. Recent reports show that mechanical consequence is specific for the system being
considered. Furthermore, mechanical stresses are involved in tissue physiology, for example, the produc-
tion of extracellular matrix (cartilage), and some specific secretions such as NO and prostaglandins in
endothelial cells under flow.
These new findings can lead to the development of the concept of biotissue which means substituting
tissues made in vitro, based on bioreabsorbable (or no) scaffolds and on cells cultured in a mechanical en-
vironment similar to the in vivo physiological conditions (vessel, cartilage, bone). It is estimated that this
new biomedical industry will reach a market turnover of more than 50 billion US dollars in the year 2020.

6.1. Cardiovascular tissue engineering

Presently, research in this field is aimed at various targets such as myocardiac grafts and biovessels. In
2000, the autologous graft of leg skeletal myoblast cultures in a patient suffering from a major cardiac
insufficiency, has opened the door for new applications of cell therapy. In fact, this first therapy attempted
to demonstrate that grafted muscle cells could become functional muscle fibres under the appropriate
biochemical and mechanical environment.
In the vascular field, the group of Robert Nerem in Atlanta (Georgia Tech/Emory University) is devel-
oping vascular substitutes in vitro using cultures of smooth muscle cells and vascular endothelial cells in
a collagen gel under physiological flow conditions.

6.2. Cartilage engineering

Cartilage is an interfacial tissue composed of only one cell type, the chondrocyte, and an autosynthe-
sized matrix. Its properties are a function of its mechanical environment. A large number of studies aim
to make cartilage in vitro with chondrocytes cultured in an initial matrix of polymers (hyaluronic acid)
and under a physiologically compatible pressure. Clinical applications of such cultured tissue could see
the light of day in the not too distant future.
10 J.-F. Stoltz and X. Wang / From biomechanics to mechanobiology

There are still many cell and tissue therapies targeted by researchers, which need further investigations
on the effect of the mechanical environment and on the quality of cell and tissue grafts (for example:
mesenchymal cells, hematopoietic stem cells, bone tissues).

7. Conclusion

“An unique point of view is always wrong.” Paul Valéry

Like any other biomedical discipline which wants to be credible, biomechanics must come to a better
understanding of pathological situations (e.g., thrombosis, atherosclerosis, arthrosis). That is why fu-
ture evolution of the science necessitates interdisciplinary links between mechanics, physics, chemistry,
molecular biology and genomics. Research in these fields will lead to implantable biotissues and to new
cell therapies in the near future.
However, a large number of unknowns still exist, giving full meaning to the thought of the philosopher
H. Michaux in the last century:
“Any science creates new ignorance
Any conscious creates a new unconscious
Any new acquisition creates a new void”

General bibliography on biomechanics and mechanobiology

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A.A. Biewener, Biomechanics – Structures and Systems, IRL Press at Oxford University Press, New York, 1992, 290 pp.
H.J. Bereiter, O.R. Anderson and W.E. Reif, Cytomechanics. The Mechanical Basis of Cell Form and Structure, Springer-
Verlag, New York, Berlin, 1987, 294 pp.
C.G. Caro, T.J. Pedley, R.C. Schroter and W.A. Seed, The Mechanics of the Circulation, Oxford University Press, New York,
Toronto, 1978, 527 pp.
J. Enderle, S. Blanchard and J. Bronzino, Introduction to Biomedical Engineering, Academic Press, London, 2000, 1062 pp.
H.M. Frost, An Introduction to Biomechanics, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, 1971, 151 pp.
Y.C. Fung, Biomechanics: Mechanical Properties of Living Tissues, Springer-Verlag, New York, Berlin, 1981, 433 pp.
Y.C. Fung, K. Hayushi and Y. Seguchi, Progress and New Directions of Biomechanics, Meta Press, Tokyo, 1989, 444 pp.
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Dordrecht, London, 1995, 436 pp.
M.Y. Jaffrin and F. Goubel, Biomécanique des Fluides et des Tissus, Masson, Paris, 1997, 454 pp.
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A. Silberberg, ed., Perspectives in Biorheology (Festschrift for A.L. Copley), Pergamon Press, New York, 1981, 422 pp.
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J.F. Stoltz, New trends in Biorheology, Biorheology 30 (1993), 305–322.
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J.F. Stoltz, ed., Mechanobiology: Cartilage and Chondrocyte, Biorheology 37 (2000), 1–190.
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S.L.Y. Woo and Y. Seguchi, Tissue Engineering, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, BED, 1989, 146 pp.