Joanne Tipper: Professor, Head Of School, Biomedical Engineering
About my work
I have established an internationally leading profile in the area of joint replacement research. Every year >3m individuals in Australia seek medical attention related to Osteoarthritis. This number is increasing as our population ages and patients expect to continue to participate in the activities they love, e.g. skiing, hiking, running, tennis etc. There is no cure for Osteoarthritis, most treatments address only the symptoms and as pain occurs at a late stage in the disease, most patients have no option but to consider joint replacement. The number of replacement hips and knees are growing, surpassing >2m globally. As the patient moves, the surfaces of the implant rub together and tiny microscopic particles are released. These accumulate and reach a level where they are recognised by the cells of the immune system and cause inflammation. This inflammation continues for many years, eventually leading to damage of the bone around the implant, which loosens, causing pain. The implant then needs to be revised and replaced with a new one. This is very expensive and risky for the patient. Implants last 10-15 years or longer in most patients but in a significant proportion of the recipients they fail early (<10 years).
I have spent the last 25 years performing research to improve understanding of the particle characteristics which lead to hip, knee and spinal implant failure. This includes devising novel methods for particle generation and isolation, together with the understanding of how particle characteristics (size, morphology, material) influence failure of devices. I have delivered impact and pioneered techniques to generate clinically-relevant particles in the laboratory (in terms of size and morphology), to isolate the full size distribution of particles from patient tissues and laboratory simulators, and to isolate and characterise nanoscale UHMWPE particles from hip and knee implants. I published the first report globally on the potential of nanoscale particles to cause bone lysis and loosening, an area that was not well understood previously. I continue to push the boundaries of my research area, recently developing novel methodologies to allow isolation of extremely low volumes of particles from modern ceramic total hip replacements (THR) for the first time, that are 100-fold more sensitive than existing methods. My track record in wear particle isolation has led me to collaborate with the major orthopaedic device companies e.g. DePuy Synthes Joint Reconstruction, Invibio, investigating wear particle characteristics and responses to alternative bearing materials e.g. ceramic-on-metal THR, crosslinked and antioxidant polyethylenes and poly etherether ketone.
A memorable win
My research has influenced the development of new materials and devices by industry collaborators e.g. the widespread introduction of highly crosslinked UHMWPE materials that have lower wear and hence lower osteolytic potential, leading to 100,000 patients receiving longer lasting hip replacements. This high impact research paved the way to me being invited to co-author both the ISO standard (ISO 17583:11 and the ASTM standard (F1877-05) for wear particle isolation. More recently, I have been invited as an international expert to engage with the FDA (Washington 2015, 2017 http://medicalpeek.org/), the Chinese FDA (Shanghai 2015) and the European Commission (Brussels 2014) [17] on the subject of biological responses to PEEK wear particles and Biomaterials for Health, respectively.
Another memorable win was being headhunted to become the inaugural Head of School of Biomedical Engineering at UTS (from the UK) to lead an all male academic team, successfully holding two University leadership positions concurrently, Head of School and Acting Dean GRS for the last 12 months, and driving the recruitment agenda in the School to provide opportunities for early career researchers, especially women in Engineering. I have actively recruited talented women, offering them continuing positions, and grown the number of female academics to 25% in the School. I have also provided mentoring support for all new academic staff, either personally or with the support of other senior academics in the school.
Participating in the Franklin women’s mentoring scheme as a mentor two years on the run, mentoring two young female academics from University of Sydney, is a role I enjoy immensely and think is very important, having received excellent mentoring from a female academic throughout my career. In particular, one of the mentees was disillusioned with academia and was ready to give up her career as a researcher. By the end of the program, she had rediscovered her love of Science, applied for and was successful in being promoted to Senior Lecturer and is forging her own successful independent academic career.
As Acting Dean GRS, I have introduced a scheme to provide financial support for Open Access publication for HDR students, something that is encouraged but is costly and often comes from a student’s limited scholarship funds. I have also proposed Carer leave be introduced for HDR students who have had a particularly difficult time juggling the various roles they fulfil as HDR students, employees, carers, parents, colleagues etc. during the pandemic over the last couple of years.
Bio: Joanne moved into the multidisciplinary research field of medical engineering in the mid 1990s after completing a PhD in skin microbiology at the University of Leeds. Over the last 25 years she has developed methodologies for isolating wear particles generated by total joint replacements. With over 90 peer reviewed publications on the isolation of UHMWPE, metal and ceramic particles and the biological responses to wear debris Joanne’s work has contributed to the understanding of implant failure and the development of longer lasting, more reliable devices. Projects include isolation, characterisation and determination of the cellular responses to wear particles from new and novel materials including silicon nitride based coating systems, antioxidant polyethylenes e.g. vitamin E UHMWPE, PEEK and CFR-PEEK and carbon nanotube/graphene polyethylene composites. New and expanding areas of interest include investigation of spinal cord cellular responses to wear products from spinal implants and instrumentation alongside projects investigating neural stem cell and primary neural cell responses to matrix stiffness of novel hydrogel scaffolds for central nervous system repair.
Websites
UTS profile page: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Joanne.Tipper
