$3.2M NIH grant for Grove School’s Mitchell Schaffler

Distinguished Professor Mitchell B. Schaffler, chair and Wallace H. Coulter Professor of Biomedical Engineering at The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering, is awarded a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Schaffler is researching the biomechanical and molecular mechanisms by which skeletal tissue, such as bones, grows strong or decays as people grow older. This new grant will fund his research into determining how changes in osteocytes—the cells that reside inside bones—contribute to the development of osteoporosis and bone fragility.

Osteoporosis and resulting bone fragility are a major public health threat affecting more that 40 million people in the United States. Schaffler’s work will build on recent discoveries by his team of researchers who found that osteocytes possess a specialized complex of proteins and membrane channels that act as mechanical sensors. With age or hormone-level shifts – such as estrogen loss by women during menopause – these sensors deteriorate.

“Bones are like muscles; you either use it or lose it,” said Schaffler. “The cells in your bones act as mechanical sensors and grow strong due to physical activity, exercise, etc. But as you age, the cells eventually grow deaf as it were, so that they no longer respond appropriately and that can lead to bone fragility.”

The Grove School of Engineering, named for alumnus Andrew S. Grove ’60, was established in 1919 as The City College School of Technology and currently houses 115 full-time faculty doing cutting-edge research in fields ranging from energy and sustainability, nanotechnology, materials engineering to transportation and remote sensing. Celebrating its 100-year anniversary, Grove School graduates continue to flourish receiving prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Goldwater Scholars foundation just to name a few. Visit the Grove School website here.

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