Dr Gustavo A. Orozco PhD
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lund University

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common joint disease affecting over 40 million Europeans. The number of patients with OA will increase by over 70% in developed countries over the next 20 years, whilst it’s estimated that direct and indirect costs will increase by over 300%. Since the progression of OA is highly subject-specific, prevention of the disease can only become possible when the progression can be predicted for an individual patient. Hence, this project will develop patient-specific numerical models to predict changes in the articular cartilage during OA progression and the pain mechanisms involved.

In addition, mechanobiological modelling can estimate the physiological and structural changes in the knee joint tissues (cartilage, meniscus, ligament, and tendon) under (ab)normal loading conditions. Based on this approach, we aim to improve the understanding of causes for 1) degeneration and/or regeneration of musculoskeletal tissues under abnormal mechanical loading and 2) altered tissue adaption process when the loading return to normal levels using numerical and experimental in-vitro properties into the 3D knee joint finite element models. Numerical outputs would be] contrasted with clinical outcomes from different clinical trials, including pain pathways in the OA population.

Dr Gustavo Orozco joined the Biomechanics group at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lund University, as a postdoctoral researcher in April 2021. His research focuses primarily on the biomechanics of articular cartilage, mainly predicting the progression of osteoarthritis using numerical models. He also works on characterising the biomechanical tissue properties by combining experimental and numerical methods.

Before joining Lund University, Dr Orozco conducted his doctoral studies at the Biophysics of Bone and Cartilage research group at the University of Eastern Finland, working on mechanobiological models of articular cartilage. You can read more about Dr Orozco’s work on Lund University’s homepage here.