Gloria Gronowicz, PhD

The major interest of my laboratory is the study of bone cell responses to implants in aging. Both dental and orthopedic implant materials are being investigated. Presently with Drs. Kuhn and Hurley, we are developing new implant materials that are able to sequentially release different growth factor to stimulate bone formation. These novel scaffolds are being applied to a critical-size, bone defect model in aging mice and in human osteoblast cultures that are derived from bone discarded after orthopedic procedures in elderly patients.We are also studying the effect of an integrative medicine therapy, Therapeutic Touch, on the growth and differentiation of bone cells and osteosarcoma-derived cell lines. Therapeutic Touch involves the application of human biofields from practitioners’ hand. Plates of cells are treated twice a week for 10 minutes without any touching. We have found highly significant effects on cell proliferation and differentiation compared to untreated cells and placebo-treated cells. Presently we are also working with a breast cancer model in mice, treating these mice with Therapeutic Touch and studying tumor growth, metastasis and immune responses.Our third project is to study the etiology of otosclerosis. Otosclerosis is a focal disease of the human temporal bone and is among the most common causes of acquired hearing loss in the U.S., as it affects 0.1-1% of the general population. There are several stage of otosclerosis but the last stage involves hypermineralization of the stapes bone. We acquire stapes bone discarded from patients with otosclerosis and compare their phenotypic properties with osteoblast cultures from peripheral bone of age and sex-matched patients and from normal stapes of patients with other medical issues that require removal of the normal stapes. We have also found that bisphosphonates can normalize the properties of the otosclerotic cultures and we are presently studying the effects of bisphosphonates on these bone cells.We use molecular biology, histology, histomorphometry and biochemistry to address these research projects.