Osteoarthritis→

Osteoarthritis is the reason the rest of this network exists. Jessica's master's thesis at G.E.R.N., the Zentrum für Gewebeersatz, Regeneration und Neogenese in the Department of Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery at the University Medical Center Freiburg, asks what happens inside a chondrocyte once inflammatory signalling takes hold. She came to the disease through the cell rather than the clinic. Her stated research focus covers cytokine-driven chondrocyte dysfunction, cytoskeletal mechanotransduction and single-cell morpho-proteomic profiling, and each of those sits underneath osteoarthritis as the condition that makes them worth studying. She has worked at G.E.R.N. since January 2025, first as a scientific research intern and from that August in the thesis phase. Her intention is to stay, and she is preparing a doctorate at the Faculty of Medicine, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, in the same institute where the master's work was done. Nothing in the surrounding nodes is there for decoration. Microbiology, biostatistics, image analysis and project management all feed one question about why cartilage fails and what could be done earlier.