C.A. Paggi (Carlo Alberto)

In 2012 Carlo Alberto Paggi started his study in Biomedical Engineering at Politecnico of Milan. Three years later he finished his Bachelor with an assignment on the development of protocols for the realization of microstructural epoxy resin molds to be used for Lab-on-a-Chip production. The work was realized under professor Vesentini’s supervision. Further, he was part of the CCS (Consiglio Corso di Studi) of Biomedical engineering at Politecnico. This organization manages courses and deals with all potential and current problems and issues within the biomedical engineering track at the Bachelor and Master level.

After his bachelor graduation, he followed a pre-doctoral Summer School in Quantitative Biology at Istituto FIRC di Oncologia Molecolare (IFOM), in Milan, where he worked on the use of micropatterning techniques to analyze the structure and the behavior of cells. In 2016, he started his master at University of Twente in the Bionanotechnology & Advanced Biomanufacturing track. The track focuses on a combination of  tissue engineering, nanomedicine and Lab-on-chip applications. During his enrollment he has been working at Mayo Clinic in the laboratory of professor Andre Van Wijnen. The objective of the study was to identify key molecular mechanisms present during the interaction of mesenchymal stem cells and chondrocytes. During that period, he was involved in different projects which were presented at the ICRS of 2018 in Macau. For his master assignment he worked on the development of a cartilage-on-chip model in the AMBER (Applied Microfluidics for BioEngineering Research) group under the supervision of  Séverine Le Gac and Jeroen Leijten. The work has been presented at different conferences as poster or oral presentation. In 2018 he graduated Cum Laude and he started his PhD training in the Department of Developmental BioEngineering under professor Marcel Karperien.

Project description

Organ-on-chip platforms can contribute immensely to the understanding of multi-organ disease, where representative systemic models are lacking. Joint degenerative diseases, such as osteoarthritis (OA), are examples of such complex multi-organ diseases. The communication between the joint tissues is key to understanding homeostasis and disease conditions. However, addressing the communication between the involved organs has remained challenging. In this context, the aim of this project is to develop a joint-on-chip system, to mimic the cross-communication between joint components, ultimately to replicate the healthy and diseased (osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis) joint micro-environment.

Organisations

• Faculty of Science and Technology (TNW), Developmental BioEngineering (DBE)