The interfascicular matrix niche - novel approaches to identify the aetiology of tendinopathy

肌腱损伤（肌腱病）越来越常见，高度衰弱和顽固。肌腱病是细胞驱动的超负荷反应，因此药物治疗的成功开发必须首先建立驱动疾病的机械转导途径，以确定可能的靶点。该项目利用器官芯片的方法，使第一次详细探索特定肌腱细胞亚群的机械生物学，调查细胞相互作用，以确定驱动肌腱损伤的途径。该项目将在QMUL的Hazel Screen和Martin Knight教授的团队中进行，与东英吉利大学的Graham Riley博士合作。成功的候选人将在我们新的QM-Emulate器官芯片中心工作，该中心拥有广泛的细胞培养设施，并得到博士后和博士生多学科团队的支持。我们将进行肌腱细胞群的第一次表型分析，此外还将建立第一个用于探索生理学和病理学的肌腱芯片共培养模型。

Tendon injuries (tendinopathies) are increasingly common, highly debilitating and recalcitrant. Tendinopathy is cell driven in response to overload, so successful development of pharmaceutical treatments must first establish the mechanotransduction pathways driving disease, to identify likely targets. This project utilises organ-on-a-chip approaches to enable a first detailed exploration into the mechanobiology of specific tendon cell sub-populations, investigating cell interplay, to identify the pathways driving tendon injury.This project will be carried out in the groups of Professors Hazel Screen and Martin Knight at QMUL, in collaboration with Dr Graham Riley at the University of East Anglia. The successful candidate will be working within our new QM-Emulate Organs-on-chips centre with extensive cell culture facilities and supported by a multidisciplinary team of post docs and PhD students. We will carry out the first phenotyping of the tendon cell populations, in addition to establishing the first tendon-on-a-chip co-culture model for exploring physiology and pathology.