Dr Alexandra Iordachescu is a Principal Investigator & Teaching Fellow in Bioengineering in the department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on developing bone organoids and other complex tissue-engineered biosystems, also known as micro-organs and artificial tissue models, for screening, regenerative medicine and simulating the physiological response to altered environments.
At the University of Birmingham, Alexandra leads multiple interdisciplinary projects, consisting of modelling human biology in analogue systems, with a particular focus on understanding the response to significant or absent mechanical stress and the ageing of (bio)materials. Alexandra has expertise in using high resolution X-Ray systems for structural and biochemical characterization of these platforms. She is also a lecturer in several modules in the department, teaching themes such as tissue engineering and in vitro organogenesis.
Alexandra undertook a joint doctoral programme between the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford (awarded in 2018), during which she worked on developing an in vitro model of mature bone tissue, where she was able to culture constructs over clinically relevant durations (1-2 years).
After completing her PhD, she continued her research in the department of Chemical Engineering, where she has held several teaching and research roles. In 2018, she was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the NC3Rs (UKRI) to become a Training Fellow and PI. In this work, Alexandra engineered a trabecular bone organoid model and used this to establish an in vitro bone loss model as a replacement to animal-based research studies.
She was subsequently awarded further funding as PI through a Skills and Knowledge Transfer grant to continue this research and apply the bone organoids in a pre-clinical/pharmacological context, by working collaboratively with the University of Manchester.
Before joining the University of Birmingham, she also studied at Master’s level in Space Physiology at King’s College London, which involved practical work at the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine and the European Space Agency-DLR in Cologne, Germany. This experimental work was focused on understanding the physiological responses to hypoxia, lower-body negative pressure and centrifugation.