Engineering exercise: How collaboration between medicine and engineering is rewriting the story of healthy aging

A collaboration between Kristin Stanford, PhD, and Daniel Gallego Perez, PhD, both professors of general surgery in The Ohio State University College of Medicine, is uncovering new ways for people to mimic the benefits of exercise, all without breaking a sweat.  

Their recent work merges the latest nanotechnology with insights from metabolism research, illuminating how so-called good fat, or brown adipose tissue, could be key to improving heart health and promoting healthy aging. For Dr. Stanford, whose background lies in exercise and metabolism, this research is a natural extension of years spent studying how movement improves metabolic health. 

“We’ve been really interested in exercise research,” she says. “One of the things that we did a couple years ago was to investigate the effect of exercise on signaling lipids, fatty acids that can travel through the blood and talk to other tissues.” 

Her team discovered that one of these signaling lipids, 12,13-diHOME, increased significantly after exercise – and that it came from brown adipose tissue, or good fat. That finding sparked a new question: Could technology recreate the effects of exercise in individuals who are unable to exercise themselves? 

That’s where tissue nanotransfection (TNT) comes in, an innovative technique that Dr. Gallego Perez created in 2017, while he was an assistant professor.  He now also serves as professor of biomedical engineering at The Ohio State University College of Engineering, where some of his research focuses on the development of novel biomedical micro-and nanoscale technologies for both fundamental and translational applications.

“TNT stands for tissue nanotransfection, and transfection essentially means deploying genes,” he explains.  “What makes it unique is that this happens in tissues in vivo. Essentially, what we came up with is a way to open a window into the cells through which we can dump cargo actively in a controlled setting, putting them in contact with any tissue of interest.” 

The technology uses nanochannels – microscopic channels fabricated using the same methods as computer chips – to deliver genetic material directly into cells. By applying a brief electrical pulse, the device creates a temporary opening in the cell membrane, pushing in the desired material in just 100 milliseconds. The results are astounding. 

“Imagine if you were eating whatever you want to eat for six weeks, and I told you to work out once a week for 100 milliseconds and that’s enough for you to prevent gaining excessive amounts of weight and keeping a healthier liver,” Dr. Gallego Perez says. 

The collaboration has allowed both researchers to approach old questions with new tools. For Dr. Stanford, TNT provided a way to test how the body might mimic exercise benefits, such as those produced by brown fat, without physical activity. As their work deepens, the researchers see their collaboration as a model for how together, engineering and medicine can push boundaries neither field could reach alone. 

“The first time I heard Daniel talk about his technology, I think I ran up to him at the end of the room, and I said, ‘Wow, let’s try this,’” Dr. Stanford recalls.  “We didn’t have a way to increase this lipid systemically, and this technology was an answer.” 

For Dr. Gallego Perez, the partnership opened new scientific horizons. 

“The collaboration allows you to think of new frontiers that were not an option to you at the beginning,” he says.  “When I work with Dr. Stanford, I say, ‘Yes, we can do it,’ but if you ask me if it’s going to work, I likely say it’s not going to work. And Dr. Stanford continues to prove me wrong, time and time again.” 

Both researchers believe their discoveries could also reshape how we understand healthy aging. Rather than viewing aging as an inevitable decline, they envision a future where tools like TNT and metabolic research could extend vitality well into later life. 

“How can we improve cardiac function – and not necessarily to make it so that you could go run a marathon, but so that you’re healthy – you could go for a walk. You could maintain the function that you had before,” Dr. Stanford says. 

As their collaboration continues, both scientists are pushing the frontier of what’s possible – not just for medicine and engineering, but for the way we define aging, health and the body’s capacity to adapt.