Caitlyn Collins
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Biomedical Engineering
Bones become more fragile with age and with type-2 diabetes, and these fractures are a growing public health problem as diabetes becomes more common. Bone is built mainly from collagen, a protein that forms a flexible network, and mineral.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
bone fragility
bone fracture
type-2 diabetes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Test whether advanced glycation end product (AGE) crosslinks, sugar-driven links in bone collagen, reduce fracture resistance in human tibia and fibula from healthy and type-2 diabetic donors.
- Compare crack growth at slow physiological and fast fall-like loading rates, using fracture tests analyzed with elasto-plastic fracture theory and high-resolution in-situ imaging.
- Measure direction-dependent bone stiffness with non-destructive acoustic elastography and relate fracture behavior to levels of 15 AGE types using statistical analysis.
More about the research
Aging and diabetes add more crosslinks, chemical connections within this collagen network. The project hypothesizes that these extra crosslinks make bone less able to resist cracking.
Why it matters
Older adults and people with type-2 diabetes face higher fracture risk. Pinpointing which collagen crosslinks make bone brittle could support therapies designed to restore bone's fracture resistance. This may help reduce fractures, especially those from falls.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Maribel Vazquez
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Biomedical Engineering
Examine how combined endothelial cell and Müller glia responses change cell growth, shape, tight junction protein expression, and barrier resistance and permeability in co-cultures that mimic the inner blood-retinal barrier.
Mallikarjunaiah Muddamallappa
Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi, TX·Mathematics & Statistics
Formulate a regularized phase-field model of brittle fracture that uses strain-limiting constitutive relations, avoiding the unrealistic infinite strain predicted by linear models at crack tips.
Yingchao Yang
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Materials Science·Early-career
Synthesize single-layer and multilayer two-dimensional high entropy materials containing at least five elements, using solid-state reaction and chemical vapor deposition.
The school
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 496 research doctorates a year.
More about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.