Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR

• ANR METIS(ANR-13-BS09-0004-02). Title: “Mechanics of Tissues: multiscale structural ap- proach of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome”. Involved research groups: LMS (Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, Mines ParisTech, PI: Jean-Marc ALLAIN), LOB - Optics and Biosciences Laboratory (Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, INSERM), IGFL - Institut de Génétique Fonctionelle de Lyon (ENS Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS, INRA). Total amount of the grant: 200k€ for the team. The METIS project is dedicated to the study of the biomechanics of connective tissues. Soft connective tissues such as skin, tendon or cornea are made of more than 90% of extracellular matrix proteins, fibrillar collagens being by far the predominant component. The rationale of this project is to understand the link between the microstructure of connective tissues and their macroscopic mechanical properties. To achieve this, observations of the fibrilar collagen will be done at different levels of stretch, while recording the mechanical properties. The consequences of change in the microstructure will also be explored through mutants mimicking the Ehler-Danlos syndrome, but also aging or wound-healing experiments. The project was completed on September 30th 2017 (4 years project).

Other funding

• IPM-MS project (for Imagerie Polarimétrique de Mueller pour la réalisation d’un système original de caractérisation des propriétés mécaniques des Matériaux Structurés). 50k€ funded by the LABEX Lasips. This project, which involves the LPICM laboratory (Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS), the LMS (Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, Mines ParisTech) and the Centre des Matériaux (Mines ParisTech), aims at developing an optical tool to study the link between the mechanical properties of a material and its hierarchical organization. Despite the development of new methods to observe the microstructure, one of the limitations is the number of observations that can be obtained on a given sample in a realistic experimental time. To overcome this difficulty, we are planning to use the Mueller polarimetry to obtain at a fast rate (a few frames per second, compared to a few frames per half-hour) relevant information on the local anisotropy of biological (heart, skin) and composite (short fibers composite) samples.

• G. Bureau, software engineer in the team, is funded by an Inria Reo industrial contract with Kephalios, a startup working on innovative artificial valves devices.