Prof. Christian Candrian (Ortho-Trauma Clinical Research): Our clinical research is focused on Orthopaedics and Traumatology. We address the main orthopaedic pathologies and the traumatic injuries, taking into account the most frequent pathologies addressed at our institution.
The Service of Orthopaedic and Traumatology is further divided in five smaller teams, which are: Shoulder, Knee, Ankle/Foot, Hand/Wrist and Hip. Each team is composed by senior clinicians and residents, and all the teams are assisted by the Research group, in order to develop and supervise the ongoing clinical trials and help promoting the research lines.
Prof. Matteo Moretti (RMTL): The regenerative medicine technologies Lab focuses on the development of three-dimensional in vitro substitutes of musculoskeletal tissues such as bone, cartilage and skeletal muscle. These biological replicates can be exploited both as a model for the investigation of pathological mechanisms and drug screening tests and as clinical grafts for the replacement of damaged tissues. We are applying our models to study diseases affecting the bone such as sarcomas and tumor metastases, or whole joint diseases such as osteoarthritis and muscle pathologies such as dystrophies and fibrosis.
Prof. Yves Harder (CPRE): Scientific research is an important pillar of our specialty and thus of our department and essential for constantly evolving the effectiveness of our treatments and introducing new forms of therapy for various pathologies involving plastic, reconstructive and purely cosmetic surgery.
In the area of clinical research, our efforts are mainly focused on various aspects of breast reconstruction after oncological breast surgery due to breast cancer, but also on optimization of soft tissue reconstruction in extremities and the use of adipose tissue and stem cells for various applications. As for experimental research, we currently collaborate with several institutes in terms of “expertise” and/or personnel (students or residents). Topics range from tissue engineering, fat and stem cell research from adipose tissue, to projects more oriented toward vascularized composite tissue allografts such as face and hand transplantation or development of new tissue engineered vascular grafts.
Prof. Christian Candrian (Ortho-Trauma Clinical Research): The main goal of scientific medical research is to find new and structured evidence to improve everyday clinical practice and to offer better solutions for each patient. In order to accomplish this important task, research must be conducted in a methodologically precise and clear way, involving the different experts addressing the various conditions. Everything begins with the clinical question: starting from an issue raised by clinicians, the first step is to analyse the scientific literature, to understand what is the evidence in the scientific community about that particular topic. If there is no consensus, or if a structured resume of the literature is required, we proceed with a systematic review and meta-analysis, a strong and high-quality work that is able to highlight the main features of interest in that field. Retrospective studies on our patients are also an interesting way to address the results of our interventions.
Finally, taking into account all that we have analysed, we can build clinical study protocols (including high-level randomized controlled trials) that will help both us and the scientific community to improve the clinical knowledge and to better treat our patients.
Prof. Matteo Moretti (RMTL): To build our models, we exploit biofabrication and microfluidic techniques, aiming at reproducing tissue architecture and function. The models are based on human cells specific for the tissue (including vascular and immune components) embedded in a 3D matrix, mimicking the natural extracellular matrix, and cultured in ad-hoc designed devices. Imaging and quantitative assays are applied to elucidate cell behavior in diseases and/or with drugs.
Prof. Yves Harder (CPRE):It is in the nature of our specialty that there is often a need for retrospective studies or case series, to investigate and critically analyse different therapeutic options for different pathologies, due to rather fit-to-patient than standard nature of some of our therapeutic approaches, but also because of low case load for some rare pathological entities, such as necrotizing fasciitis or pyoderma gangrenosum. Nevertheless we also have a couple of prospective studies running, mainly in the field of breast reconstruction. Our collaborations on basic and translational scientific projects involve advanced laboratory work including cell cultures and in vivo testing using mainly established and newer rodent models on mice and rats
