Growth and remodelling of living tissues: perspectives, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

<jats:p>One of the most remarkable differences between classical engineering materials and living matter is the ability of the latter to grow and remodel in response to diverse stimuli. The mechanical behaviour of living matter is governed not only by an elastic or viscoelastic response to loading on short time scales up to several minutes, but also by often crucial growth and remodelling responses on time scales from hours to months. Phenomena of growth and remodelling play important roles, for example during morphogenesis in early life as well as in homeostasis and pathogenesis in adult tissues, which often adapt to changes in their chemo-mechanical environment as a result of ageing, diseases, injury or surgical intervention. Mechano-regulated growth and remodelling are observed in various soft tissues, ranging from tendons and arteries to the eye and brain, but also in bone, lower organisms and plants. Understanding and predicting growth and remodelling of living systems is one of the most important challenges in biomechanics and mechanobiology. This article reviews the current state of growth and remodelling as it applies primarily to soft tissues, and provides a perspective on critical challenges and future directions.</jats:p>

Fast, Rate-Independent, Finite Element Implementation of a 3D Constrained Mixture Model of Soft Tissue Growth and Remodeling

“…Others have simulated complex 3-D biological growth in diverse soft tissues using a finite (kinematic) growth framework [1,[38][39][40]. Advantages of this approach include its computational tractability, enabling implementations in existing finite element solvers.…”

“…A distinguishing feature of soft biological tissues is their ability to grow (change mass) and remodel (change microstructure) in response to diverse stimuli, often mechanical and chemical. Multiple approaches for mathematically modeling such growth and remodeling (G&R) have proved useful in describing diverse situations for many different tissues [1]. Among these approaches, a constrained mixture model has proved particularly useful when there is a need to account for the different material properties and rates of turnover of the individual constituents that define the tissue [2].…”

Predicting calvarial morphology in sagittal craniosynostosis

“…It must be noted that there are other methodologies based on e.g. theories of finite growth and constrained mixtures that have been used to model the growth and remodelling of various living tissues 33,34 . A detail comparison between the approach described here and other theories is beyond the scope of this study.…”

Condensation tendency of connected contractile tissue with planar isotropic actin network

“…When = 1, there is no condensation tendency. Following the theory of morphoelasticity 28 in Eulerian frame 28,29 , we define the elastic stretches = ⁄ and = ⁄ as a result of the mismatch between the prestretch and the observable deformation stretches = ( ) −1 and = ( ) . Notice we define a map R(r) from the current position to the initial position to track the deformation inversely.…”