Biochemical changes in articular cartilage tissue and interactions with chondrocyte biophysical regulation

Osteoarthritis is a pathology that affect the most the knee joint, specially the articular cartilage. One of the first signs of cartilage degeneration is the change of biochemical composition, e.g. loss of proteoglycans. One hand, such loss affects directly the mechanical response of the tissue to the external stimuli, e.g. internal pressure. On the other hand, changes in internal pressure affect the behaviour of the chondrocytes interactions that would lead to catabolic responses of the cells, affecting tissue integrity and mechanical behaviour. On the one hand, this project aims to define rules for chondrocyte mechanoregulation to be integrated in a network-based model of chondrocyte activity available at UPF. On the other hand, multiphysics finite element simulations will be used to translate tissue (cartilage)-level mechanical loads into mechanoregulatory inputs at the cell level. The results obtained will serve to explore the possible effects of knee mechanical loads on articular cartilage turnover, in an osteoarthritis patient cohort through previously developed patient-specific knee models.

Hosting group: SIMBIOSys-MBIOMM (www.biomech.es)

Supervisors: Jerome Noailly ([email protected]) - Carlos Ruiz ([email protected])