I am based at the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry. I work on a grant funded by Versus Arthritis as part of the Tissue Engineering Centre. The focus of my research has been to isolate and characterise Mesenchymal stromal cells from human umbilical cords as an allogeneic source of cells for regenerative cell therapies for the treatment of diseases such as Osteoarthritis (OA). We have used these cells in two pre-clinical models of OA and grown them successfully in the Quantum® bioreactor for large-scale cell expansion.

I also work on the ASCOT (Autologous Stem Cells Chondrocytes Or the Two) clinical trial as part of a team that analyses the cells being returned to patients. One of the aims of this work is to try to find markers which may help us identify the most therapeutically potent cells for treating patients in the future.