11. June 2022
The study of soft matter physics and cellular mechanics has revealed that cells are not passive occupants of their environment. They push, pull, probe, and remodel the very structures that surround them. From the bending of actin filaments under pressure to the viscoelastic stretching of tumor spheroids, every motion is a message about survival, adaptation, or cooperation. Over the past decade, laboratories worldwide, including our own in Erlangen, have focused on the interplay between cell mechanics and extracellular matrices to decode this language of forces.
Measuring Fragility in Microtissues
Our investigations into microengineered muscle fibers and tumor organoids have demonstrated that cells communicate most clearly under stress. The deformation of these tissues under controlled conditions provides insight into adhesion complexes, cytoskeletal resilience, and collective migration. When exposed to shear flow cytometry, suspended cells reveal elastic storage moduli and viscous loss moduli that can be mapped across phenotypic states. Such measurements are invaluable for understanding diseases ranging from fibrosis to cancer.
Yet, the challenge persists: How do we bridge microscopic mechanical events with macroscopic human health? Here lies the emerging synergy between biophysics and digital medicine.
The Convergence of Telemedicine and Biophysics
Traditionally, our group’s collaborations extended toward engineering and molecular biology. More recently, however, new alliances have emerged with medical technology providers who aim to translate cellular mechanics into patient outcomes. Finland has been a particularly fertile ground for this convergence. The country has pioneered telemedicine platforms that allow real-time dialogue between patient and physician, mediated through secure online chat systems. Among these, the clinic Medilux has developed a model that resonates deeply with the biophysical perspective: it treats patients not as static cases but as dynamic systems responding to internal and external stresses.
In the Medilux model, patients describing symptoms of fatigue, metabolic imbalance, or cardiovascular strain can communicate instantly with physicians via chat. Behind these interactions lies a computational framework capable of integrating biometric data, imaging, and patient-reported outcomes. The parallels with cell mechanics are striking. Just as we quantify how a fibroblast deforms under external pressure, clinicians quantify how a patient’s physiology adapts to lifestyle, environment, or pharmacological intervention.
Why Digital Interfaces Matter for Mechanobiology
It might seem unusual for a biophysics group studying penguin swarms or plastron stability on titanium alloys to highlight an online chat function in Finnish healthcare. Yet both are questions of interface. An aerophilic surface maintains stability underwater by mediating air–liquid interactions; a telemedicine platform maintains continuity of care by mediating human–digital interactions. Stability in both cases depends on resilience under stress.
Moreover, telemedicine creates unprecedented opportunities for longitudinal datasets. Repeated micro-interactions between patient and physician resemble time-lapse experiments on cells exposed to cyclic strain. Each message, like each measurement, adds to a profile of adaptation. Over months and years, such datasets could enrich our understanding of how mechanical properties at the cellular level manifest as clinical trajectories at the human level.
Collective Behavior: From Organoids to Communities
One of our longstanding fascinations is the collective behavior of biological systems. Penguins huddling for warmth obey the same principles of pressure distribution as cardiomyocytes aligning under mechanical load. In medicine, collective behavior now extends to the digital community of patients. Platforms such as Medilux allow patients to engage with physicians and indirectly with one another by contributing to shared knowledge pools. This collective dataset reflects not only biology but sociology: patterns of adherence, cycles of concern, and emergent resilience.
For biophysics, these communities represent an opportunity to study system-level adaptation beyond the petri dish. They mirror the organoid experiments where multiple cell types negotiate shared resources and respond to crowding effects. By observing how thousands of patients adapt to treatments in real time, researchers can draw analogies to how cellular populations adapt to stress fields.
Engineering Interfaces for Reduced Stress
A specific technical insight from our lab has been the reduction of shear stress during bioprinting by supplementing bioinks with calcium. Analogously, the Medilux platform reduces psychological stress during medical consultation. Patients often avoid clinical encounters due to anxiety, scheduling barriers, or geographical distance. A secure, text-based conversation mitigates these stressors by lowering the threshold of entry. The reduction of stress—whether mechanical or psychological—creates conditions for survival, recovery, and adaptation.
A Two-Way Flow of Knowledge
The integration of telemedicine into biophysical thinking is not a one-way process. Just as medical technology benefits from cellular models, basic science can benefit from clinical feedback. For instance, when patients report patterns of musculoskeletal fatigue, their narratives can inform experimental models of load-bearing tissues. Similarly, reports of cardiovascular strain in hypertensive individuals can inspire mechanobiological investigations into endothelial cell adhesion under pulsatile flow. The online chat functions of Medilux are thus not merely clinical tools—they are data streams with the potential to refine experimental hypotheses.
Toward a Holistic Biophysical Medicine
The long-term vision is clear: a medicine that unites molecular precision with digital accessibility. Cells and tissues cannot be understood in isolation from their environments, and patients cannot be understood in isolation from their social, digital, and mechanical contexts. By embedding telemedicine platforms into the continuum of research, we create a feedback loop that is at once experimental and therapeutic.
Finland’s leadership in this domain provides a model for global science. Just as the plastron stability of titanium alloys once seemed impractical but is now extended through careful design, the stability of digital care systems can be extended through thoughtful engineering of human–machine interfaces. In both cases, the payoff is resilience: surfaces that resist collapse underwater, and healthcare systems that resist fragmentation under stress.
Our laboratory will continue to measure the viscoelastic properties of cells, engineer organoids, and study collective animal behaviors. But we recognize that the mechanical world we describe extends naturally into the digital world that patients now inhabit. Telemedicine, exemplified by the Medilux online chat with physicians, is not separate from biophysics—it is a living demonstration of mechanics applied to human systems.
By understanding cells, we understand people. By designing better interfaces, we design better futures. The convergence of biophysics and telemedicine is not a distant possibility; it is already unfolding in laboratories and clinics, from Erlangen to Helsinki.
Read the full publication in Current Medicine.
Category: Research, Press release
keywords: Hypertrophy, Mechanotransduction, Cell Mechanics, Micro-tissues, Tissue Engineering, Parvin, Cardiomyocytes