Generally, the word hydraulic fracturing or fracking refers to the controversial technique used to extract gas and petroleum from shale rock layers. Now, Xavier Trepat,  ICREA research professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), has led a study that describes fracking in the body at a cellular level. The discovery opens avenues to new biotechnological applications, for instance the selective release of drugs.

The research team developed new technologies to submit these tissues to mechanical deformations. “We wanted to understand how living tissues behave in response to the types of distortions experienced as a result of the heart beating, or breathing, for example,” says Xavier Trepat, ICREA researcher and group leader of the Integrative Cell, Tissue Dynamics group at IBEC and researcher in the Department of Physiological Sciences I of the University of Barcelona  “We expected that, faced with very large distortions, the tissues would respond by snapping as if under excessive tension, as other scientists have previously proposed. Surprisingly, we found that ‘fracking’ occurred, instead.”

Fracking has different consequences in living tissue than in the earth’s subsoil. “Ruptures underground are irreversible, whereas the body is able to repair hydraulic breaks in less than five minutes,” says IBEC’s Laura Casares, first author on the paper. “Under normal circumstances, hydraulic pressures generated in the body do not cause problems. But in pathological conditions or ageing tissue, fracking may cause or aggravate inflammatory diseases characterized by the infiltration of fluid in tissues.” 

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