Development of ex vivo Tissue Culture Models for Studying Osteogenic Guidance Cues for Bone Repair and Regeneration

Bone repair and regeneration can be influenced by various guidance cues, including pharmacological cues, hypoxia environment and chemical cues released from scaffolds [1-3]. Translation of these approaches to clinical use can be complex and expensive, largely due to the complex pre-clinical models that are currently used to study bone repair and regeneration. This study will develop a number of ex vivo tissue culture models that may be used to test various guidance cues, and also may be utilised to answer specific questions. In particular, models that can specifically demonstrate intramembranous ossification or endochondral ossification will be developed, as these will enable clinically relevant bone repair/regeneration strategies to be tested. These models will be extremely relevant to research in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and biomaterials research.

The project offers multi-disciplinary training, and the labs involved have extensive experience with developing and characterising synthetic scaffolds for guiding tissue repair and for tissue engineering, and for utilizing various ex vivo culture systems as model systems to test the effects of various pharmacological compounds on skeletal development. The successful candidate would receive training in the characterisation of biomaterial scaffolds and substrates, cell culture and cell-material interactions, chick embryo cultures and tissue dissection, histological analysis and immunohistochemistry, imaging (light and fluorescence microscopy) and microcomputed tomography (uCT). Much of the work in our institution is very translational, so the student would also gain exposure to the considerations required to translate aspects of research towards potential clinical use.