Bone ageing reduces the quality of life of the elderly and puts social and economic burden on society. Ageing bones fail more easily when challenged mechanically or with toxicants or pollutants and respond differently to drugs than healthy bone. To personalize therapies and enable better preventive care for the elderly it is essential to develop reliable and sustainable in vitro models of aged bone tissue.

OSTEONET project aims to build a multidisciplinary research network for the development of reliable and sustainable 3D in vitro cell models of healthy and aged bone tissue, and for the exploitation of the model features to increase knowledge on the effects of ageing on bone biology and mechanobiology, and on bone response to drugs.

The project kicked off its activities in Milan, Italy on February 6, 2023. The project is led by the University of Calabria and has a consortium of other 11 partners including the Industrial Systems Institute.