A team of iBB/DBE researchers (João Carlos Silva, Kristin Schüler, Frederico Ferreira and Filipe Miguel) received the 2025 Human Advanced In Vitro Model Initiative (HUMAIN) Award from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and InSphero to implement the project “WOAH-Pause! – In vitro model of Women OsteoArthritis Health during MenoPause”.
The main aim of the project is to develop a human-based dynamic microfluidics-based in vitro model that mimics both osteoarthritis (OA) and menopause-related hormonal alterations to study why the OA disease worsens after menopause and allow the testing of safer and more personalised therapies, avoiding the use of animal-derived materials and reducing the reliance on animal experiments.