Wei Shen receives R21 award
Wei Shen
The Shen Research Lab focuses on engineering biomaterials and using these materials to investigate cell-microenvironment interactions and to model diseases, with ultimate goals of understanding, detecting, and curing human diseases.

December 13, 2023 — Department of Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Wei Shen was recently awarded an R21 to study structural adaption of the Dystrophin-Associated-Protein-Complex (DAPC) in regulating nanotopography-responsive myotube orientation. 

DAPC is an important transmembrane protein complex that structurally, mechanically, and functionally links cytoskeleton and the extracellular matrix. It serves as both mechanical and signaling hubs in regulating cells in muscle and other tissues and organs, and mutations affecting DAPC components are associated with a wide range of diseases. 

It was previously discovered in Prof. Shen’s laboratory that DAPC plays an important role in regulating nanotopography-responsive myotube orientation, which serves as a phenotypic biomarker to distinguish non-diseased and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy cells, but detailed mechanisms remain unknown. 

In this R21 project, Prof. Shen will collaborate with Joachim Mueller, a Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, to examine the nanoarchitecture of the DAPC in muscle cells and its structural adaption on nanotopography by using biomaterials engineering and super-resolution Single Molecule Localization Microscopy.

This study is expected to gain a mechanistic understanding of how the DAPC regulates nanotopography-responsive myotube orientation and also to reveal novel engineering approaches to regulate cell behavior and cell fate through topographic control of the DAPC.
 

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