Doctoral thesis success: Vera Citro
Congratulations to Vera Citro on successfully defending her doctoral thesis titled “Nano-delivery to enhance stem cell/synthetic hybrid-based tendon regeneration protocol” on 12th December, 2025. Vera carried out her doctoral project at Keele University, UK, supervised by Prof. Nicholas Forsyth and Dr. Tina Dale at the School of Life Sciences at Keele, in co-tutelle with Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini.
The project was carried out in the frame of the Doctoral Training Network Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions “PERSPECTIVES FOR FUTURE INNOVATION IN TENDON REPAIR” (P4FiT), of which Prof. Boccaccini was a principal investigator, coordinated by Prof. Helder Santos.
Prof. Boccaccini highlighted the innovative character of Vera’s project in the field of tendon repair. The study aimed to enhance tenogenic differentiation of MSCs and tendon progenitor stem cells (TPSCs) by tailoring biological signalling within a controlled in vitro niche, which was achieved by designing and fabricating anisotropic electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffolds that are intended to recapitulate the native tendon’s hierarchical architecture. The results obtained by Vera are an important contribution to the field and several high impact papers have been already published resulting from Vera’s thesis, for example: [1], and other papers are in preparation. Many congratulations to Vera on the successful defense of her doctoral thesis, we wish Vera all the best in her future career.
[1] V. Citro, et al., Tenogenic Cues Are Biochemically and Environmentally Distinct for Tendon Stem Cells and Mesenchymal/Stromal Stem Cells, Stem Cells Int, 2025 May 13:2025:9047956. doi: 10.1155/sci/9047956.
