Research

Organ-on-a-chip, Osteoarthritis, Obesity, Bioengineering, Cartilage, Adipose Tissue, In Vitro Disease Modelling

Underpinning Bioengineering, Infectious Disease and Inflammation Models, Musculoskeletal Models

PhD Title

Development of an adipose-cartilage-on-a-chip model to investigate the role of obesity in osteoarthritis

Interests

My research interests focus on the development and application of human-relevant in vitro models for musculoskeletal disease research. My PhD project aims to develop an adipose-cartilage-on-a-chip model to investigate the role of obesity in osteoarthritis (OA). Under the supervision of Dr Josephine Wu and Dr Stefaan Verbruggen, the project seeks to recreate physiologically relevant interactions between adipose and cartilage tissues in a controlled microphysiological system. The model will be used to investigate how obesity-associated changes in adipose tissue contribute to OA-related processes through inflammation, adipokine signalling, and tissue crosstalk. More broadly, I am interested in organ-on-chip technologies, obesity-associated musculoskeletal disease, tissue engineering, and the development of predictive human-based models that can improve our understanding of disease mechanisms while reducing reliance on animal models.