2024-08-18 10:17:05
If the 20th century belonged to Physics, with its great advances in the sciences of inert matter, the 21st century has its focus on Biology. But ideas from physics can also contribute to expanding our knowledge of living matter. Lines of research are deployed on them in the laboratory of Xavier Trepat Guixer, ICREA professor at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). Trepat is also part of the scientific committee of the Health Foundation.
Educated in Physics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Barcelona, where he received a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine, Xavier Trepat led, after his time at Harvard University, the group one at IBEC since 2008, where approaches from physics include those of the workplace of cells. His work has generated knowledge in the field of mechanobiology and has allowed the development and patenting of several technologies that measure cellular mechanical properties at the micro and nanometric scale. For his contributions he has received the Lilly Foundation Award for Preclinical Biomedical Research, which he received this year together with neurologist Xavier Montalban in the Clinical Biomedical Research department. This year he was also awarded the King James I Prize for Scientific Research.
How does a pathologist end up diagnosing metastasis? When I finished my physics studies, I was interested in life sciences. It seems to me that the biggest problems of my generation of researchers will be understanding how living things work. Physics had great success in the 20th century in understanding the workings of inert matter. The challenge of the 21st century is to understand living matter, and to do so we must integrate principles and concepts from physics with those of biology.
However, it seems that he has chosen his professional career well: this year he has been recognized with the Lilly Foundation Award and Jaume I. How (or what) do the awards affect scientific work? It is always good to make your work known. I experienced it as the recognition of a field of research that no one paid attention to a few years ago and now has established itself as one of the most developed in the world.
Focusing on tumor cells, they are known to create metastasis thanks to their ability to move. What did they see about that activity? We have understood different mechanisms that spread cells in different places. Cells have many strategies to move, and when you block one, they use another. This is, in part, why it is so difficult to fight metastasis.
And what would you like to find? We would like to find mechanisms to control the forces generated by the cells, and thus be able to speed up or stop them according to our needs.
Another of his lines of research is looking for a way to promote the movement of immune cells so that they enter the tumor and eliminate it. How will they do it? In many cases, the immune cells cannot enter the tumor and kill the cancer cells. They become trapped around the tumor, which is made up of fibers and cells called fibroblasts. Isolation of immune cells is one of the main problems in improving the effectiveness of vaccines. More and more we know how to get immune cells to kill cancer cells, but these efforts are futile if they cannot reach the tumor. We are trying to develop tests that allow us to study what prevents the transfer of immune cells, whether physical or biochemical factors.
What specific tumors do you diagnose? At the moment we focus on colon and breast cancer, but the problems are all solid tumors.
He explained that when two people hug each other, they use a new energy, and when two cells interact with each other, the energy is a nanonewton (one billion times less than hugging). . With what technology do they measure this ‘mobile hug’? How do you expect this type of technology to be optimized, where is it going? We synthesize very soft gels in the shape of space and of similar size of cells. Then we put these small points in the muscles and look at them with a microscope. By measuring how these fields deform we can estimate the energy the cells are working with. We want to simplify and adapt this technique so that it can be used by researchers who are not experts in the field.
He said, “Trying to understand living things without thinking about biology and physics is like half the alphabet with which books are written.” What discoveries in the field of medicine that are now being addressed can be written in the perfect alphabet? Many problems. For example, how embryos develop. Today we know many biochemical and genetic processes associated with the growth of embryos, but only with dynamic measurements we can understand how they manage to get the shapes that give the organs. Similarly, understanding the effects generated by cells will allow us to better understand metastasis and improve tissue regeneration. Sonia Moreno (DM)
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