Project
Mechanical Tissue Loading for Musculoskeletal Regenerative Medicine
Several research groups within KU Leuven focus on understanding the homeostasis, degeneration and adaptation of musculoskeletal tissue in order to improve its regeneration. Tissue studied range from cartilage and bone, over ligaments and tendons, to muscles. There is therefore an imminent need for a dedicated set-up that allows the controlled application of complex loading conditions to tissues in long-term in vitro culture. Such a set-up is not available in Belgium, and in extensu the Benelux.
Within this proposal, we will apply for a set of bioreactors suitable to apply controlled and multi-axial loading to cultured tissue explants and cell constructs for long-term experiments, allowing intermediate MRI-base evaluation of tissue constitution.
This set-up is to be installed at the Skeletal Biology and Engineering Research Center at KU Leuven and will form the core of an interest group on loading-induced musculoskeletal adaptation at KU Leuven but also nationwide, unifying researchers from orthopaedics, rheumatology, traumatology and human movement science.