School of Biosciences

Research Overview

My research interests encompass the cellular and molecular events that are involved in maintaining articular cartilage tissue homeostasis, and the mechanism/s that propagate degeneration of the tissue as observed in the pathology of osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is a multi-factorial disease and one of the major risk factors is abnormal mechanical load i.e. through sports injury, obesity. My current research focuses on the role of the cytoskeleton, in particular the vimentin intermediate filaments in transducing mechanical signals in articular cartilage, and how these intracellular networks maintain the cartilage chondrocyte phenotype. A related, secondary interest is delinating the involvement of the tubulin microtubles, and the signalling pathways utilised, in TGFβ1-mediated collagen synthesis in chondrocytes.