Engineering

Dr Syeda Masooma Naqvi joined the Mechanobiology and Medical Device Research Group in October 2017 after receiving her PhD from the internationally recognized Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where she investigated the specific environmental conditions that can aid in stem cell-based regeneration of the intervertebral disc. Prior to this Masooma received her MSc (Clinical Research) from University of Galway where she also received her BSc in Biomedical Science. After she was awarded her PhD in Biomedical Engineering, she took up a Postdoctoral Researcher post in University of Galway where she diversified her research into the area of bone disease. She established a simplified 3D in vitro osteocyte model that mimics the mechanical environment in vivo in an attempt to further understand the mechanisms by which osteocytes sense and respond to mechanical signals in postmenopausal Osteoporosis. This work received much attention at the Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting 2020, where she presented it at a Spotlight Session. More recently, she has developed advanced in vitro models that are mimetic of the complex multicellular (osteocytes, osteoblasts, vascularisation, macrophages, progenitors) and mechanical (hydrostatic pressure and compression/perfusion) bone environment during postmenopausal Osteoporosis. Nationally, this work was recognized as the best overall paper presented at the 27th Bioengineering in Ireland Annual Meeting 2022 for which she was awarded the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Bronze Medal. In other works, she has investigated the combined influence of matrix stiffness (mimetic of bone marrow) and breast cancer-bone cell signaling on spheroid formation and shown that spheroid size is significantly reduced under high stiffness versus low stiffness. Breast cancer cells comprise a subpopulation of cells with key stem-cell properties that initiates and drives carcinogenesis and differentiation which contributes to tumor cellular heterogeneity and are likely responding to the change in stiffness as is evidenced by differential spheroid size. She has secured a number of grants, such as the  Athena Swan Research Capacity Building grant, to investigate this hypothesis.
Link to publications
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=h6Yum-IAAAAJ&hl=en