Extracellular Matrix→

This node is context for Jessica's work rather than a technique she performs. The matrix is what chondrocytes build and maintain, and its failure is what defines osteoarthritis clinically. Her own assays read the cell, not the matrix directly. What connects them is the question she was given at G.E.R.N., which asks whether a chondrocyte keeps its chondrogenic phenotype under inflammatory conditions, since a cell that loses that identity stops maintaining the tissue around it. G.E.R.N. is named for Gewebeersatz, Regeneration und Neogenese, so matrix biology is the institute's declared subject even in the places where it is not her own individual readout. She spent four days at TERMIS EU 2025 in Freiburg, where tissue engineering and matrix scaffolding were the shared vocabulary. Biomarker analysis is the route those readouts take into her work. Naming that boundary is more useful than implying an expertise the bench record does not yet support.