Mechanics of craniofacial development

The physical-mechanical interactions that shape our skulls during infancy are poorly understood. This lack of fundamental knowledge limits our ability to advance treatment of a wide range of craniofacial conditions mostly affecting children. This is a significant engineering challenge due to the complexity of this system. This project will address this challenge and critical gap in our knowledge while focusing on a major craniofacial condition called craniosynostosis, that has virtually doubled in incidence across Europe in the last 30 years.

In a series of pilot experiments, we have recently discovered that by external loading of the craniofacial system in a craniosynosotsis mouse model, we can delay/prevent early fusion of a specific cranial suture affected in the considered mouse model and restore its calvarial morphology.

The overall aim of this project is to characterise the precise level of mechanical strain induced at the targeted cranial suture during the calvarial loading. We will use advanced imaging techniques together with in silico computational models as well as in/ex vivo experiments to unravel the mechanobiology of the craniofacial system.

The results obtained in this study will not only advance our fundamental understanding of the mechanics of craniofacial growth but also will pave the way for scale up of our technology to larger animal models and potentially for development of a novel revolutionary treatment approach for the management of craniosynostosis.