Research group

Interdisciplinary Musculoskeletal Health

4 Stained femur cross sections

The University hosts a substantial interdisciplinary community of researchers working to transform musculoskeletal health across the life course.

About

With expertise in regenerative medicine, physiology, engineering, orthopaedics, prosthetics and orthotics, rehabilitation and assistive technologies, epidemiology and clinical trial design, we aim to improve lives by delivering improved treatments, increasing the speed to market of musculoskeletal-focused technology and training the next generation of scientists and engineers. 

The population across the globe is living longer, which brings a number of healthcare challenges, especially in musculoskeletal health. The burden of age-related disease and injury is rising rapidly, having a detrimental impact on people’s quality of life and increasing the costs of healthcare provision. Loss of muscle mass and function is the leading reason for loss of independence in later life, and causes impaired mobility, falls, fractures, physical disability, increased insulin resistance and associated co-morbidities, and mortality. The number of hip fractures is expected to rise to 6.3 million by 2050 and the number of diabetic lower limb amputations has now risen to 7,000 per year in the UK and over 70,000 in the USA. 

The University is working to meet these challenges by creating networks of experts working in interdisciplinary musculoskeletal health research to develop new technologies, interventions and practices that will have a positive effect on people’s lives:

  • FortisNet is an interdisciplinary research network of clinical, academic and industrial partners that aims to develop products and services to transform musculoskeletal health. Launched in 2016, we have fostered over 50 new collaborations with other universities from across the UK, the NHS and industry. We have developed courses with national partners to help innovators understand how to bring medical technologies to market, and through investment in interdisciplinary studentships we are working to dissolve discipline boundaries, to train a new generation of life scientists and engineers for the benefit of society.
  • MyAge (Muscle resilience across the life course: from cells to society) is one of eleven UK Ageing Networks, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Medical Research Council. Led by the Institute for Life Sciences, together with partners from Birmingham, Nottingham and Imperial, the network will guide the future of muscle resilience research through roadmap development and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Research highlights

Preventing the transmission of non-communicable disease risk between generations

Research from the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Centre demonstrates how the diet and lifestyle choices of prospective parents and pregnant mothers can affect the long-term health of their children.

Using nanoclay gel to regrow, repair and replace damaged cells

Southampton researchers have developed an innovative medical clay that can be used to apply regenerative medicine to patients with musculoskeletal conditions.

People, projects and publications

People

Professor Giles Richardson

Professor

Research interests

  • Modelling renewable energy storage and generation
  • Modelling in biomedicine

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Dr Giuseppe Pileio

Associate Professor

Research interests

  • NMR Methodology developments
  • Long-lived Nuclear Spin States
  • Diffusion NMR

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Dr Gordon Inglis PhD

Principal Research Fellow

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Professor Graham Roberts

Prof in Paed. Allergy & Resp. Medicine
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Dr Gregory Perry

Lecturer in Chemistry

Research interests

  • Organic Chemistry
  • Synthesis
  • Catalysis

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Dr Guido Maiello

Lecturer

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Dr Guy Denuault

Associate Professor

Research interests

  • Oxygen reactions in electrocatalysis
  • Theory and applications of nanoelectrodes, microelectrodes and nanostructured microelectrodes
  • Theory and applications of scanning electrochemical microscopy

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Professor Hans Michael Haitchi MD, MMed(INT), PhD, PD, MRCP(London), FHEA, PGcert

Professor

Research interests

  • Study of the asthma susceptibility gene A Disintegrin and Metalloprotease 33 (ADAM33) in early life and adult asthma and other chronic lung diseases.
  • Development of novel Anti-ADAM33 agents as potential disease modifying asthma therapy.
  • Multiomic study of the influence of the maternal environment (e.g. allergic asthma, obesity) during pregnancy on ADAM33 and other mediators and the early origin of lung disease in the Maternal Environment in Pregnancy (MEP) cohort.

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Dr Hansung Kim

Associate Professor

Research interests

  • 3D Computer Vision
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) for scene understanding
  • Audio-visual data processing

Accepting applications from PhD students

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Professor Hasan Arshad

Prof in Allergy & Clinical Immunology
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Related research institutes, centres and groups

Related research institutes, centres and groups

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We welcome new members. To join, or find out more about FortisNet or MyAge, please email the Institute for Life Sciences team.