Understanding the complex cell-matrix interactions that lead to arthritis (Arthritis, cartilage, proteinases, aggrecan)
Overview
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Amanda (Mandy) Fosang is a biomedical researcher who has pioneered arthritis research in Australia.
Mandy is a Principal Research Fellow with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia who has an established career researching arthritis and cartilage biology in health and disease. She is Group Leader of Arthritis Research at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (MCRI) and the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics, which are co-located at the Melbourne Children's Campus.
Mandy returned to Australia after completing her post-doctoral studies at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London, and was awarded an RD Wright Fellowship by the NHMRC in 1994. Since then she has received continuous competitive grant and fellowship funding from the NHMRC. She joined the University of Melbourne, Department of Medicine in 1990, and moved to the Department of Paediatrics in 1994. Mandy became a Group Leader of the MCRI at its inception in 2000.
Mandy's expertise is in matrix biology, proteoglycans and metalloproteinases. The goal of her research program is to understand the complex interactions between cartilage cells and their matrix, in both healthy cartilage and arthritic diseases. Her work focuses on the structure and function of the cartilage molecules, aggrecan and type II collagen, and the enzymes that destroy them in arthritic disease. She and her team have generated unique mice for evaluating cartilage damage in arthritic disease. Her work showing that ADAMTS-5 is the major aggrecanase in mouse cartilage was published in the high-profile international journal Nature in 2005.
More recently, Mandy's group has been studying the degradation products generated by these enzymes, and how these products might regulate cellular function. Some studies are done in explant and cell culture systems, or with highly purified enzymes and substrates in vitro. Other studies use unique, g
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