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Welcome to the Marenzana Lab - Skeletal Pathomechanobiology Mechanical homeostasis in living organisms ensures that our supporting structures such as the skeleton, the articular joint, the ligaments, the muscle and the tendons are continuously achieving an optimized balance between mechanical competence and light design. This process is controlled by the tissue resident cells, which can sense the mechanical environment through their extracellular matrix and can modify it according to some inbuilt homeostatic set points. The importance of this process becomes immediately evident when it goes wrong. This is the area of interest of the pathomechanobiology research. Osteoporosis and osteoarthritis are the two most common skeletal diseases in the elderly population and are both diseases of impaired mechanical homeostasis. Their consequences are catastrophic for the patients and usually involve prosthetic intervention, permanent disabilty and pain. The mechanisms regulating mechano-sensing and mechano-adaptive remodelling are not completely understood and even less is known about the interaction between the mechano-adaptive response and hormonal unbalance, inflammatory conditions and age-related conditions. The ultmate goal of the researches in Marenzana Lab is to improve our understanding of the mechanisms regulating tissue-level mechano-adaptation and their modulation by systemic factors with the hope that, identifying key molecular mediators of these processes, will lead to more efficient pharmacological treatments. If you are interested in learning more, please check out our Research page and our Publications. We are in the Department of Bioengineering.