Tendinopathy: to treat or not to treat, that's the question

Marc van Vijven is a PhD candidate in the Tendon & Ligament Mechanobiology research group, which is part of the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group, under supervision of Jasper Foolen and Keita Ito. His project focuses on intercellular communication in tendons and ligaments, and how this influences tissue properties in a healthy or diseased state.

Marc van Vijven, born in Vlaardingen in 1993, obtained his BSc in Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology in 2014. After his final bachelor project in the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group, under supervision of René van Donkelaar, he joined the group of Cees Oomens (Soft Tissue Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering) as master student and research assistant in a project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Dublin and the University of Alberta. During his time in the group, he also spent several months abroad at the National University of Singapore, in the Tissue Modulation Laboratory. After graduating (with honors) in 2016 with a project aiming at the development of a constitutive model for skin mechanics, he returned to the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group for his PhD on the mechanobiological properties of healthy and diseased tendons and ligaments.