Udhaya Nedunchezhiyan is a 2nd year PhD student in Cartilage Regeneration Laboratory. Udhaya studied Genetic Engineering (B. Tech) at SRM University in India followed by Master of Molecular Biology Research Extensive at The University of Queensland, Australia. As an undergraduate student, she did her major project on the Genetics of autism spectrum disorder where she investigated the Fragile x gene and Rett syndrome gene using Sanger sequencing at the National Institute Of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences, India, and continued as an intern to work on the project until moving to Australia. During Masters, Udhaya worked on two different projects associated with Alzheimer’s Disease at the Queensland Brain Institute and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. She also got a Winter Research Scholarship from the University of Queensland to continue her project at QIMR. Udhaya was fascinated with regenerative medicine and wanted to use minimally invasive techniques to regenerate tissues that had lost their ability to proliferate due to extensive damage, this motivated her to pursue a PhD. Through her Ph.D. research, Udhaya aims to develop serum-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) entrapped in injectable hydrogel that facilitate efficient recovery and cost-effective regeneration of cartilage for people with osteoarthritic (OA) cartilage deformation. Specifically, Udhaya and her supervisory team (Prof. Travis Klein and A/ Prof Tony Parker) are determined to identify the mechanism through which these serum-derived EVs are capable of inducing chondroprotective effects on chondrocytes. This work aims to pave the way towards personalized treatments in cartilage regeneration for OA patients, utilizing minimally invasive techniques.
Thesis title
Investigating the cartilage regeneration capacity by injectable hydrogel with extracellular vesicles from serum