Daphne Menssen is a Doctoral Candidate (PhD) in the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group under the supervision of prof. dr. Keita Ito, dr. Florencia Abinzano, and dr. Sebastien Callens. Her project focuses on developing methods to generate large volumes of cartilage organoids from human induced chondroprogenitor cells, which can be combined with unique hydrogels and biofabrication methods to engineer large-scale articular cartilage. This research is part of the Large-Scale Neo-Cartilage Engineering (LS-CarE) consortium.

Daphne Menssen completed her bachelor's degree in Medical Sciences and Technology at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in 2020. In 2023, she obtained her MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering within the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group of prof. dr. Keita Ito from the Biomedical Engineering department at the same university. For her graduation project, she evaluated the mechanical integration between native cartilage tissue and a hydrogel implant during cartilage repair. She completed her master’s degree with an internship at Spierings Orthopaedics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. There she evaluated chemical and mechanical cleaning processes on bone grafts. In 2023, she started as a PhD candidate in the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group where she will work on a solution for large-scale neo-cartilage engineering for the treatment of osteoarthritis. Her role in this project is to generate large volumes of cartilage organoids from human induced chondroprogenitor cells.