Tobias Ehrenberger (FRAENKEL LAB)

Identification of Dysregulated Signaling Events in Medulloblastoma

Medulloblastoma (MB) is the most common malignant pediatric brain cancer; and, even though previous studies helped us define the genomic and transcriptomic landscapes of this disease, no successful targeted therapies have been identified. We believe this can be attributed to a lack of mechanistic insights. Our group, therefore, studies different kinds of signaling molecules directly. This talk will give an overview of our efforts to identify dysregulated and potentially targetable signaling events in MB and its subtypes.

Bo Qing (VAN VLIET LAB)

Characterizing Viscoelastic Mechanical Properties of Biological Soft Tissues With Impact Indentation

Precise and accurate measurement of mechanical properties becomes increasingly challenging as the stiffness of the sample decreases. Here, I present a novel approach to quantify viscoelastic moduli and relaxation time constants with a technique called impact indentation. We demonstrate that impact indentation can be applied to characterize materials as compliant as brain tissue with millimeter scale spatial resolution and without certain complications characteristic of traditional techniques.