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

肌腱损伤(肌腱病)越来越常见，高度衰弱和顽固性。肌腱病是由细胞驱动的对超负荷的反应，因此成功的药物治疗必须首先建立驱动疾病的机械转导通路，以确定可能的靶点。该项目利用芯片上器官的方法，首次详细探索特定肌腱细胞亚群的机械生物学，调查细胞之间的相互作用，以确定驱动肌腱损伤的途径。该项目将由QMUL的Hazel Screen教授和Martin Knight教授与东安格利亚大学的Graham Riley博士合作进行。成功的候选人将在我们新的QM模拟芯片器官中心工作，该中心拥有广泛的细胞培养设施，并由博士后和博士生组成的多学科团队提供支持。我们将对肌腱细胞群体进行第一次表型鉴定，并建立第一个用于探索生理和病理的肌腱芯片上肌腱共培养模型。

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.