Biomechanics and Bioengineering Research Centre Versus Arthritis

The Biomechanics and Bioengineering Research Centre Versus Arthritis has the skills and facilities that are successfully delivering a "step-change" in treatment and the understanding of osteoarthritis and other musculoskeletal disorders such as back and knee pain.

The Centre is investigating how our everyday movements can influence the health of our joints and how this may contribute to disease onset. This is providing invaluable information on how disease arises and how best to treat arthritis, enabling us to develop new therapies.

Through our research we investigate normal joint movements to see how this is influenced by disease, and to inform clinical treatments and rehabilitation in musculoskeletal disorders. These include back pain, knee pain and recovery from knee joint replacement surgery and knee realignment surgery.

Our research group form a strong team of internationally-recognised researchers and clinicians who share a long-term vision to apply multidisciplinary research to improve patient care. We use our research strengths to define, identify and target mechanisms that contribute to joint disease:

• Biomechanics – joint movement and loading
• Bioengineering – linking engineering principles to biology
• Mechanotransduction – how joint loading affects cell response
• Pain
• Inflammation

The Centre involves close collaborations between patients, biomedical scientists, engineers, orthopaedic surgeons, rheumatologists, physiotherapists and the general public to translate research into patient benefits.
We also have  strong links with industry and and strong relationships with people who  volunteer to help us with our research.

Funding

This project is funded by Versus Arthritis and Cardiff University.

Lead researcher

Research theme