Andrew Pitsillides

Royal Veterinary College

Andrew is a member of the Skeletal Biology Group and until recently led Comparative Physiology and Clinical Sciences Research at the Royal Veterinary College. His research has explored skeletal mechanobiology in diverse settings; from roles of embryo movement in the emergence of skeletal form, to how bones and joints respond to functional/ traumatic load in growth, adulthood and ageing. His group has pioneered innovative non-surgical models for in vivo bone and joint loading.

He received a PhD (1988) funded by a Wellcome Trust Award at the renown Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology. His research group have: i) characterised type B fibroblast-like synovial cells based on their extracellular matrix synthesis, ii) identified the vital roles played by osteocyte-derived nitric oxide in bone responses to mechanical load-bearing and their growth-linked relationships, iii) defined mechanomodulatory roles for extracellular signal-regulated kinase and hyaluronan production in joint formation, iv) disclosed distinct osteocyte/osteoblast inputs into load’s osteogenic response to loading stimuli, and joined these to osteoporosis though spatial links to femoral neck bone turnover, v) showed cartilage trauma susceptibility is not always linked to OA vulnerability that is instead transcriptionally linked to inflammatory signaling. His group now explores mechanobiology across osteochondral interfaces by state-of-the-art, real time imaging of healthy and OA joints, to reveal key insights into epiphyseal and growth plate function and to identify new translational targets.

Andrew is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Biology, for whom he has lobbied in Parliament, Fellow of The Anatomical Society (FAS) and Higher Education Authority (FHEA) and has been honoured to receive the Fell-Muir Award from the British Society for Matrix Biology which he proudly served as its Chair, and the Dent Award from the Bone Research Scoiety. He has published >220 articles, an H-index of 55 and >11K citations. He has always enjoyed team-working, and his research aims to be unconventional, inquisitive and creative, with a desire to get to the bottom of a problem to solve it or, more often recently, find someone who can.