Published: 26 Aug 2016 | Last Updated: 26 Aug 2016 11:51:37

Congratulations to Professor Andrew Pitsillides, who has been awarded a new EU H2020 grant as part of the CarBon consortium.  

CarBon is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (MSCA-ITN) on controlling cartilage to bone transitions for improved treatment of bone defects and osteoarthritis in the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union.  In total, 14 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) will be appointed by the CarBon consortium for 36 months each.

Many people suffer from diseases of the locomotor system, such as bone defects or osteoarthritis, for which current treatments are insufficient. Understanding and controlling the dual character of cartilage is pivotal: insufficient transition impairs bone healing, and undesired transition to bone leads to osteoarthritis. In CarBon, state of the art in vitro, in silico and in vivo models will be uniquely combined to elucidate how this transition is orchestrated and how it can be modulated. In a multifactorial approach, a network of 14 young scientists will aim to identify the biological and physical factors that determine the fate of cartilage. Knowledge from the fields of tissue engineering, cartilage and bone developmental biology and pathobiology will be combined with skills from the disciplines of cell biology, computational modelling, biotechnology (bioreactors, biomaterials) and drug discovery.