Answering a loaded question
UD doctoral student honored for bone loss research
10:41 a.m., July 8, 2011--Stress and strain? Your bones need them. Without these physical forces, bone health declines rapidly. Fractures and disabilities from osteoporosis cost billions annually in medical and rehabilitation care worldwide, and the human losses are even more daunting. More women die from osteoporosis-related fractures than breast and uterine cancers combined.
Although increased exercise has been shown to reduce the rate of bone loss in patients with osteoporosis, if continuous loading is applied to bone, eventually the bone cells (“osteoblasts”) become desensitized and bone building comes to a halt.
Honors Stories
National Medal of Science
Warren Award
“You need to take a break of 20 minutes or more to get the bone cells to respond again,” notes Vimal Gangadharan, a doctoral student at the University of Delaware.
Working with his advisers, Randall Duncan, professor and chair of UD's Department of Biological Sciences, and Anja Nohe, assistant professor in the department, Gangadharan is examining how osteoblasts perceive and convert mechanical signals into biochemical responses to promote bone formation.
He wants to determine how vital receptors get “endocytized” -- or internalized -- in bone cells, leaving no way for molecules called ligands to bind with them and stimulate bone formation. He’s working to sort out which receptors become endocytized, where and when.
This past spring, Gangadharan won a Student Research Achievement Award at the Biophysical Society’s annual meeting in Baltimore for his bone cell studies. The society has 9,500 members. Of 309 student members who participated in the society’s poster session, Gangadharan was one of only 20 students who won awards, and one of only two winners in the “Exocytosis and Endocytosis” group.
Gangadharan came to UD from India as a master’s student and is now entering the fourth year of his doctoral program.
“I really enjoy research on cell signaling,” he says. “Progress on this front could have important health implications, as bone loss is a very serious problem around the globe.”
Some of the biggest bone losers are para- or quadriplegic patients, and astronauts on long spaceflights, Gangadharan notes. A 2009 study by California researchers found that without the pull of gravity, astronauts who spent half a year at the International Space Station lost as much as 30 percent of their bone strength.
Article by Tracey Bryant
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson