Postdoctoral Researcher - Bone Organoids

Postdoctoral Researcher - Bone Organoids

ETH Zürich is well known for its excellent education, ground‑breaking fundamental research and for implementing its results directly into practice.

The Singapore-ETH Centre was established in 2010 by ETH Zurich - The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), as part of the NRF’s CREATE campus. As ETH Zurich's only research centre outside of Switzerland, the centre has strengthened the research capacity of ETH Zurich to develop sustainable solutions to global challenges in Switzerland, Singapore and the surrounding regions.

The centre serves as an intellectual hub for research, bringing together principal investigators and researchers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. To promote the exchange of ideas and expertise, our researchers actively collaborate with universities and research institutes and engage with industry and government agencies to translate knowledge to practical solutions to real‑world problems.

Advanced Patient‑derived 3D Bone Organoids for Personalised Osteoporosis Drug Screening

Fragility fractures remain a major consequence of impaired skeletal health in older adults, frequently resulting in reduced mobility, loss of independence, and long‑term disability. While current standards of care provide valuable tools for evaluating skeletal health and fracture risk, they do not fully capture patient‑specific biological responses to altered bone remodelling, mechanical loading, inflammation, and pharmacological intervention. Osteoporosis and related age‑associated bone disorders are highly heterogeneous, with individuals differing in bone formation capacity, osteoclast activity, inflammatory status, mineralisation dynamics, and mechanoadaptive potential.

These biological differences can influence both fracture risk and response to therapy, highlighting the need for human‑relevant models that can support more personalised approaches to osteoporosis care.

Building on the dynamic bone organoid culture platform developed in the Laboratory for Bone Biomechanics at ETH Zurich, this project aims to further develop and apply patient‑derived 3D bone organoid models for in vitro osteoporosis research and personalised drug screening. The postdoctoral researcher will lead the optimisation of workflows to 3D print patient‑derived mesenchymal stromal cells, guide osteogenic differentiation under dynamic mechanical stimulation, co‑culture with peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and assess donor‑specific responses to pharmacological interventions.

The resulting organoid models will enable the investigation of osteoporosis‑related remodelling, immune‑bone interactions, age‑related comorbidity effects, and personalised drug‑response profiles.

Biological readouts from these models will contribute to predictive modelling frameworks for bone remodelling trajectories, treatment response, and fracture risk, supporting the advancement of precision musculoskeletal care.

The Postdoctoral researcher will interact closely with engineers, clinicians, biologists, computational researchers, to generate robust biological datasets for personalised modelling of bone remodelling drug response, and fracture prevention.

Some key components in the work are:

• Development, optimisation, and standardisation of patient‑derived 3D bone organoid models for in vitro osteoporosis research and personalised drug screening.
• Establishment of workflows to integrate peripheral blood mononuclear cells into bone organoids to model immune‑bone interactions, monocyte‑derived osteoclast activity, inflammation, and bone remodelling.
• Design and implementation of organoid‑based drug‑response assays to assess donor‑specific responses to osteoporosis‑relevant pharmacological interventions.
• Characterisation of osteoporosis‑related organoid phenotypes and treatment responses using molecular, biochemical, histological, imaging, and microscopy‑based techniques.
• Generation, quality control, and documentation of standardised biological datasets for integration with computational modelling and clinical data.
• Coordination of wet lab workflows,…