Eric Farrell, PhD
Eric Farrell is Associate Professor at Erasmus MC. In 2012 he established the Bone Tissue Engineering Research group within the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. In doing so he initiated one of the world’s first research teams focused on the process of endochondral ossification in tissue engineering. With the knowledge that endochondral ossification also plays an important role in multiple diseases he established independent lines exploring these topics, while maintaining a leading position in bone tissue engineering research. One of these has been to develop in vitro and in vivo models of endochondral ossification to study processes such as osteoarthritis and cancer metastasis, for which he has received competitive EU Funding from the Marie Curie ITN (Coordinator of CarBon project) and FET Open (PI on B2B project), amongst others. In the coming years he aims to contribute new knowledge through fundamental and applied research to address these topics, focusing both on disease modelling and bone tissue engineering strategies.
Dr. Farrell has significant experience in the management of large research projects and has successfully led several PhDs and Master students to the completion of their research projects. He has published extensively in the field of bone tissue engineering and regenerative medicine since 2006. These articles described the use of multiple in vitro models of bone and blood vessel formation, various hydrogels and biomaterials as well as the development and use of bioreactors. He has a well-established network within the field, demonstrated by his involvement in the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS), first as council member of the EU chapter, then Secretary and currently as Secretary of the Governing Board. He is also associate editor of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
Andrea Lolli, PhD
Andrea Lolli is Assistant Professor in the Bone Tissue Engineering Research group. He obtained his PhD in Molecular Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Ferrara, Italy. During this time, he developed a growing interest in the mechanisms that guide stem cell differentiation, and the application of this knowledge to regenerate osteochondral tissues. In his PhD project he established gene silencing strategies to induce the chondrogenic differentiation of stem cells without using growth factors, providing a new route to guide cartilage repair. In 2016 Andrea moved to the Netherlands for a postdoctoral position at Erasmus MC within the Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN TargetCaRe. Following-up on his previous work, he developed a microRNA therapy approach to enhance cartilage repair in vivo, by targeting endogenous progenitor cells with antimicroRNA-activated materials. In 2019 Andrea started his work in the group of Eric Farrell. This allowed him to broaden his research focus with the study of the mechanisms of endochondral bone formation, and the application of new experimental models of bone formation for disease modelling.
In addition to his research activity, Andrea supervises BSc, MSc and PhD students, and performs teaching activity within Erasmus MC. He is member of the PhD/postdoc committee of the Molecular Medicine Postgraduate School of Erasmus MC, and board member of the Netherlands Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (NBTE). Andrea recently obtained an NWO-XS Science grant (PI) and a Health~Holland TKI-LSH grant (co-PI), which will further support the research of the group on advanced experimental models for bone-related diseases.
