Synergy between Piezo1 and Piezo2 channels confers high-strain mechanosensitivity to articular cartilage.

Holly A. Leddy, PhD

Holly Leddy holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University and an BA in biology from Bowdoin College. She is currently a Research and Development engineer at the Shared Materials and Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) at Duke University. She leads both the Outreach and the Characterization teams.  She has expertise in many types of microscopy and worked for many years in the field of cartilage mechanobiology.  She has also created a vibrant outreach program at SMIF that brings the excitement of nanoscale science to thousands of people annually through both virtual and hands-on experiences.

Dr. Yong Chen is an Associate Professor of Neurology at the Duke University School of Medicine.  He is also affiliated with Duke Anesthesiology-Center for Translational Pain Medicine (CTPM) and Duke-Pathology.

The Chen lab mainly studies sensory neurobiology of pain and itch, with a focus on TRP ion channels and neural circuits. The main objective of our lab is to identify molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying chronic pain and chronic-disease associated itch, using a combination of animal behavioral, genetic, molecular and cellular, advanced imaging, viral, and optogenetic approaches.  There are three major research areas in the lab: craniofacial pain, arthritis pain and joint function, and systemic-disease associated itch.

My research lies at the intersection of surface and colloid science, polymer materials engineering, and biointerface science, with four central areas of focus:

1. Fabrication, manipulation and characterization of stimulus-responsive biomolecular and bio-inspired polymeric nanostructures on surfaces;
2. Nanotechnology of soft-wet materials and hybrid biological/non-biological microdevices;
3. Receptor-ligand interactions relevant to the diagnostics of infectious diseases;
4. Friction of soft-wet materials, specifically the role of glycoproteins on friction in diarthroidal joints.

These four broad lines of inquiry deal with fundamental behaviors of soft-wet materials on surfaces and interfaces. The design and fabrication of these interfaces using "smart" polymeric and biomolecular nanostructures, and the characterization of the resulting structures, are critically important for the development of biomolecular sensors and devices and for bioinspired materials. Key approaches and tools I use in my research are: bottom-up organization on the molecular scale, through self-assembly, in-situ polymerization, and manipulation of intermolecular interactions; topdown fabrication, through scanning probe nanolithography; stimulus-responsive polymers; molecular recognition; and new approaches to sensing and manipulation. This research supports Duke's Pratt School of Engineering strategic initiative to expand research in soft-wet Materials Science.

I am a biophysicist, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, and Director of Neurobiology Graduate Studies at Duke University. I received my PhD from the Ecole Polytéchnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland and completed an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship with Nobel Laureate Ardem Patapoutian at Scripps, La Jolla.

My research investigates the biophysics of force-gated ion channels and cellular mechanotransduction. This work produced over 30 publications, including in Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, and eLife. My past trainees have continued scientific training at academic institutions such as Harvard, The Broad Institute, MD Anderson, and Yale, or in the private biomedical sector. Further, I served on study sections for NIH R01, R03, R35, R00/K99, F32 and P20 awards, and for the German Research Foundation (DFG) Emmy Noether Award, and I regularly peer-review manuscripts for Nature, Science, Neuron, eLife, PNAS, and others.

As the Director of Duke Neurobiology Graduate Studies, I currently serve 47 intellectually diverse faculty from 15 Departments, who hold over $42M (or $900K per investigator) in research support, and 67 graduate trainees, who over the past 5 years have published 130 research articles and won 31 individual fellowships. In this capacity I oversee, coordinate, and direct all daily aspects of the Duke Neurobiology Graduate Training Program.

Research Interests in the Liedtke-Lab:

• Pain/ nociception

• Sensory transduction and -transmission
• TRP ion channels
• Water and salt equilibrium regulated by the central nervous system