Osteonet
In vitro 3D cell models of healthy and OSTEOpathological ageing bone tissue for implantation and drug testing in a multidisciplinary NETwork.
OSTEONET proposes an innovative, bioinspired, and integrated approach to the development of engineered bone tissues mimicking healthy and aged bone that will be used in bioreactors as in vitro bone models for preclinical drug screening and basic physiology studies. Expertise in all required complementary disciplines is gathered in the Consortium. An intensive and effective exchange of materials, methods, devices, information and researchers will ensure that the approach towards construct engineering and bioreactor development is truly bioinspired, integrates contributions from many disciplines in synergic fashion, and is sustainable.
An extensive secondment, transfer of knowledge and training programme will ensure that the developed culture systems are easy-to-use, do not require clumsy conventional incubators, and that a new generation of biotechnological and medical users is trained for understanding the relationship between device design and operating conditions and the actual microenvironment needed by the cells.
To reach this ambitious goal, an international, inter-sectoral, and multidisciplinary network of organisations will work on this joint programme in the framework of the HORIZON-MSCA-SE-2021. The participants will exchange competence and knowledge which will allow them to improve their key skills in the use of wet-lab and IT at the frontier of scientific research to exploit them for the design and optimization of effective drugs for the treatment of bone pathologies. This will also substantially strengthen collaborative research between different countries and production sectors.
The staff members taking part in the Project will develop new skills and will be exposed to new research environments, which will broaden up their career perspectives. Moreover, the high intersectoral and multidisciplinary integration philosophy of the Project will expose partners to new areas of both basic and applied research. This will broaden their competence and will open their vision towards novel applications of the technologies that they already master.
