Developmental Biology and Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering: Principles and Applications

Since 2009 Prof. Martin Stoddart has been working as a Principal Scientist at the AO Research Institute Davos (ARI), where he is responsible for the Stem Cell Focus Area.
He completed his bachelor studies in Biology at the University of Aberystwyth in 1995. He then spent a year in Davos at ARI where he completed his M.Phil in Cartilage Biology. Between 1996–2000 he carried out his doctoral thesis at the University of Nottingham in the field of Cancer Angiogenesis. He then returned to Switzerland to work in the Laboratory for experimental cartilage research in Zürich, initially as Post-Doc and between 2003–2005 as Group Head. During that time, he took a 6 month sabbatical at the Centre for Molecular Orthopeadics, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Boston, to learn viral gene transfer techniques. In 2005 he returned to ARI, where he is the Stem Cell focus area leader. He is a lecturer at the ETH Zürich and in 2015 he was awarded an Honorary Professorship from the Medical Faculty, Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany. In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Professorship at the Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine University of Keele, UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and a Fellow member of the International Cartilage Repair Society.

His main focus is the use of autologous stem cells and gene transfer for the repair of musculoskeletal tissues using a cell therapy approach. To this aim he investigates novel cell identification and isolation methods. His research interests include the mechano-regulation of stem cell fate, in particular chondrogenic differentiation. This has led to advances in regenerative rehabilitation and the discovery of novel clinically relevant biomarkers and targets. He is also interested in the mechanisms by which stem cells direct cell fate and interact with endogenous cells to effect a repair.

He is the author of over 80 scientific papers, 10 book chapters and is the editor of the book, Mammalian Cell Viability Methods. Methods in Molecular Biology – Vol.740. He is an Editor for Tissue Engineering Journal Parts A, B, C., Scientific Editor for eCM Journal and is the conference chair of the yearly eCM Conference. He is also an editor of BioMed Research International Orthopedics and is an Associate Faculty Member of Faculty of 1000 Medicine.

Dr. April Craft is an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery & Research at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Principal Faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Her research focuses on both developmental biology and translational medicine, and involves the use of pluripotent stem cells to understand how articular chondrocytes and cartilage tissues are specified during embryonic development and to generate appropriate cells and tissues for repair.

April Craft received her Bachelor of Science cum laude from Westminster College (New Wilmington, PA) and her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Pittsburgh, PA). She completed her doctoral thesis in the gene therapy-based laboratory of Dr. Joseph Glorioso where she engineered non-toxic viral vectors suitable for gene expression in stem cells, and developed viral replication-based functional genomics platforms to screen for genes that activate developmental programs. During her post-doctoral studies in Dr. Gordon Keller’s laboratory at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine (Toronto, Canada), she developed methods to reliably and reproducibly generate both articular and growth plate-like cartilage from mouse and human pluripotent stem cells. She accomplished this by recapitulating the developmental events that contribute to the specification of these tissues in utero, an approach that resulted in cartilaginous cells and tissues that are both molecularly and functionally distinct. Dr. Craft is currently an Assistant Professor at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where her laboratory continues to study the development of cartilage and other synovial joint tissues with hopes of applying this knowledge toward the development of therapeutics for disease attenuation and tissue regeneration and repair.

Dr. Girish Pattappa is currently a postdoctoral research scientist in the Laboratory for Experimental Trauma Surgery, Department of Trauma Surgery at University of Regensburg Medical Centre. He completed his undergraduate studies in Medical Engineering at Queen Mary University of London in 2005. Subsequently, he began his PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. David Lee and Prof. Joost de Bruijn in the Department of Engineering and Material Science at Queen Mary that focussed on the influence of cellular metabolism and oxygen tension on mesenchymal stem cell proliferation and differentiation. Upon completion in 2010, he moved to the AO Research Institute (Switzerland) and joined the Musculoskeletal Regeneration group, working on strategies for intervertebral disc regeneration. Following stints in Canada and France, he started in current position in 2016, where his research focuses on the effects of hypoxia and mechanical stimulation on stem cell chondrogenesis. He has been an author/co-author of 12 publications and has been an invited reviewer for a variety of tissue engineering journals. He has also organized and chaired session at many international conferences and is a member of various societies including ORS and TERMIS.

Oliver Completed his undergraduate studies in Biomedical Sciences at Cardiff University in 2011. His introduction to both developmental biology and tissue engineering came through working as an undergraduate and later a research assistant under Prof. Charlie Archer in the Connective Tissue Biology Laboratory. Between 2012 and 2016 Oliver worked for his PhD under Prof. Martin Stoddart at the AO Foundation Research Institute, Switzerland. His PhD focused on the induction of chondrogenesis in human mesenchymal stem cells using mechanical load and investigating the pathways involved in this process. Following his PhD Oliver moved to Boston, USA, to work on the chondrogenesis of human pluripotent stem cells with Dr. April Craft at Boston Children’s Hospital, before moving back to the UK in 2017. Oliver is the author of seven scientific papers and one book chapter, he has also presented in, organized and chaired sessions at multiple international conferences and is a member of the International Review Panel of European Cells and Materials.