Ingrid Meulenbelt

Ingrid Meulenbelt is professor Molecular Biology of Osteoarthritis at the department of Biomedical Data Science, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden Netherlands.
Meulenbelt has strategically created, a research line aiming at identification of molecular pathways involved in OA onset and obtaining a more fundamental biological understanding of how these pathways lead to OA. As such filling the gap between molecular epidemiology and clinical translation. It involved setting up a biobank of clinical OA phenotypes, blood, joint tissues. It allowed for multilevel –omics derived dynamic landscapes of joint tissues such as genome wide (mi)RNA sequencing, methylome, and cis-expression QTLs. Additionally human 3D in-vitro and ex-vivo models of joint tissues were established using primary and hiPS cells. This human 3D joint tissue organoid models enabled identification of underlying mechanism of strong OA risk genes while introducing relevant environmental cues such as mechanical loading. Establishing these OA disease models allowed use to successfully enter the research field of regenerative medicine now including development of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) derived OA cell-therapy as well as generation of hiPSC-derived cartilage implants.