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Jeffry Nyman

Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation
Research Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering


Biomedical Engineering

Intellectual Neighborhoods

Research Focus

The ultimate goal of Nyman lab is to lower the number of bone fractures associated with osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer, genetic diseases, and aging. Towards that end, we investigate ways to improve the clinical assessment of fracture risk and identify regulators of bone toughness (lack of brittleness). Using pre-clinical mouse models of disease with and without drug treatments, we also study how advanced glycation end-products, matrix proteins, transcription factors, and growth factors affect the mechanical properties of bone.

Current Projects

There are projects i) to determine whether matrix-bound water and pore water, as determined by 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, can explain age- and diabetes-related decreases in bone’s resistance to fracture and ii) to identify the determinants of matrix-bound water, and iii) to develop Raman Spectroscopy techniques as useful clinical indicator of bone fragility.

Selected Publications

  1. Creecy A., Uppuganti S., Unal M., Bunn R.C., Voziyan P., and J.S. Nyman. Low bone toughness in the TallyHO model of juvenile type 2 diabetes does not worsen with age. Bone. 110:204-14, 2018.
  2. Makowski A.J., Granke M., Ayala O., Uppuganti S., Mahadevan-Jansen A. and J.S. Nyman. Applying full spectrum analysis in the Raman spectroscopic assessment of fracture toughness of human cortical bone. Applied Spectroscopy. 71:2385-94, 2017.
  3. Granke M., Makowski A.J., Uppuganti S., and J.S. Nyman. Prevalent role of porosity and osteonal area over mineralization heterogeneity in the fracture toughness of human cortical bone. Journal of Biomechanics. 49:2748-55, 2016.
  4. Creecy A., Uppuganti S., Merkel A.R., O’Neal D., Makowski A.J., Granke M., Voziyan P., and J.S. Nyman. Changes in the fracture resistance of bone with the progression of type 2 diabetes in the ZDSD rat. Calcified Tissue International. 99:289-301, 2016.
  5. Granke M., Makowski A.J., Uppuganti S., Does M.D., and J.S. Nyman. Identifying novel clinical surrogates to assess human bone fracture toughness. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. 30:1290-300, 2015.