The doctoral candidate will work at the AO Research Institute Davos and focus on the fabrication of a mechanically loaded cell seeded intervertebral disc model. You will be working with various 3D bio-printed intervertebral disc models, consisting of nucleus pulposus, annulus fibrosus and endplate parts. The constructs will be fit into uniaxial and multiaxial bioreactor systems and cultured under mechanical loading with or without a proinflammatory component. You will be involved in every aspect of design, application, and validation of innovative preclinical models that will help to understand mechanisms of disc degeneration and to test new therapies for patients suffering from discogenic low back pain. Towards this aim, you will closely collaborate with a second doctoral student working on the same project, and with our French project partners from Nantes University and Sorbonne University.
As mentioned above, this project is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which is also supporting another PhD student position in the same institute on the topic of 3D bioprinting and immunomodulatory biomaterials. There will be close collaboration between these 2 PhD students.
