Debby Gawlitta

Associate Professor

Strategic program(s):

Biography

Dr. Debby Gawlitta is an Associate Professor working on maxillofacial bone regeneration. She is inspired by the natural mechanisms of the body for bone development and repair that she aims to adopt in her regenerative strategies. Development of in vitro models and translation of regenerative strategies to clinical practice are driving current research.

Dr. Gawlitta aims to mimic the process of endochondral bone regeneration (via a cartilage intermediate - such as seen in the growth plate) to ultimately restore defects in patients. For close to 20 years, she has focused on using bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) for bone regeneration. Recently, she showed the potential of MSCs from donor bone marrow in this regenerative approach. Her current studies concern the impact of the interaction of bone regeneration with the immune system and avenues for scale-up and clinical translation (see also here). The use of allogeneic (donor) cells will ease therapeutic interventions in patients. Furthermore, her group is focusing on vascularization and metabolic support strategies for bone regeneration to be able to create and maintain engineered living bone tissue that is large enough to treat patient defects.

In her lab, located in the Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht, several in vitro models for endochondral and intramembranous bone formation have been developed. Models of increased complexity are under development to study interactions of the immune system, vascular cells and bone formation in health and disease.

Research keywords include bone regeneration, (hypertrophic) cartilage, vascularization, in vitro complex bone models, clinical translation, biomaterials, stem/progenitor cells (MSCs, ECFCs, DPSCs), osteoimmunology, bioreactors, and 3D bioprinting.

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Dr. Gawlitta received her Biomedical Engineering degree with distinction at Eindhoven University of Technology. Her PhD thesis (best thesis award Faculty of BME) was focused on generating engineered skeletal muscle tissue to model and monitor the development of pressure ulcers.

In 2007, she moved to the department of Orthopaedics, University Medical Center in Utrecht, to work on bone and cartilage tissue regeneration within the Hospital's strategic impulse on regenerative medicine. During this postdoctoral period, she received a prestigious Veni grant (Dutch innovation grant) to pursue (endochondral) bone regeneration from a cartilage template with bone marrow-derived stem cells.

In 2014, she moved to the department of 'Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery & Special Dental Care' to establish her own group focusing on craniomaxillofacial bone regeneration. She currently holds a position as Associate Professor, supervising her group in the RMCU (Regenerative Medicine Center Utrecht).

In 2016, she received a start-up grant from the AO Foundation and in 2021 she received an OTP grant from NWO to extend and continue her endochondral research line in the XLbone project. She has published over 75 peer-reviewed papers. She is also taking part in large national consortia, such as the 'Zwaartekracht' Program on 'Materials-driven Regeneration' and the SUMMIT 'Drive-RM'. Recently, she embarked on collaborative projects targeting metabolic support of large engineered tissues (NutriBone - ZonMW Open, Wishing Table - TKI~HH).

Further, Debby Gawlitta developed and coordinated the 2-year Master’s program RMT – Regenerative Medicine and Technology (2012-2025), which is a collaborative program of the UMCU, Utrecht University and Eindhoven University of Technology. In 2025, she was appointed Director of the PhD program 'Regenerative Medicine' of the Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS) in Utrecht.

Side activities

2025- present Director PhD program 'Regenerative Medicine' at the Graduate School of Life Sciences, Utrecht

2024- present Council member TERMIS-EU (Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society)

2023-present Board member NBTE (Dutch society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering)

2019-present Member executive committee of Strategic Research Program ‘Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells’, UMC Utrecht

2019-present Member of the internationalization committee of the UMC Utrecht

2019-2023 UMC Utrecht Young Academy board member

2016-2018 Member local organizing committee of the European Society for Biomaterials congress Maastricht, September 2018 (~1000 participants)

2012-2015 General board member of the NVMB (Dutch Society for Matrix Biology)

2022-2025 MDR Young Talent Committee

2012-2025 Coordinator of Master's program 'Regenerative Medicine and Technology'

2007-present Teaching & development of various annual Bachelor, Master’s, PhD and Summer school lectures in the Biomedical Sciences, Veterinary Sciences, and Medicine curricula on e.g. Biomechanics, Bone Tissue Engineering/Regeneration and Bioreactors.

Reviewer for several journals, including Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Healthcare Materials, Nature Communications, Tissue Engineering, Biofabrication, Biomaterials, Biomedical Materials Research

Strategic program(s):

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Pure profile

Research groups

Maxillofacial bone regeneration

Research aim

Our team aims to regenerate maxillofacial bone defects via bio-inspired techniques. We combine stem cells, materials and/or bioengineering technologies to recapitulate natural bone tissue development and healing.

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Recent publications

All publications

Harnessing extracellular vesicles for endochondral bone regeneration Flurina Staubli, Yinghong Zhou, Pieter Vader, Sandra Hofmann, Jan Eelco Bergsma, Debby Gawlitta, Kenny Man
Acta Biomaterialia, 2026, vol. 212, p.168-186

Extracellular vesicles in osteoimmunomodulation Femke Pol, Alessia Longoni, Riccardo Levato, Debby Gawlitta, Kenny Man
International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, 2025, vol. 338

Advances in extracellular vesicle-based nanomedicine for regenerative orthopaedics Sara Gil Izquierdo, Andrés Fernández Pilar, Jaqueline Lourdes Rios, Khoon S Lim, Wei Seong Toh, Chaozong Liu, Mario Gimona, Debby Gawlitta, Kenny Man
Journal of Nanobiotechnology, 2025, vol. 24

Mixtures of PRR Ligands Partly Mimic the Immunomodulatory Response of γi Staphylococcus aureus, Enhancing Osteogenic Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Paree Khokhani, Kelly Warmink, Moyo Kruyt, Harrie Weinans, Debby Gawlitta
Stem Cells International, 2025, vol. 2025

Effect of Microbial Stimuli and Bone Morphogenetic Protein 2 on Ectopic Bone Formation Nada Ristya Rahmani, Anneli Duits, Paree Khokhani, Michiel Croes, Vela Kaludjerovic, Debby Gawlitta, Harrie Weinans, Moyo C Kruyt
Tissue Engineering. Part A, 2025, vol. 31, p.1227-1238

Local delivery of lipid-based nanoparticles containing microbial nucleic acid for osteoimmunomodulation N. R. Rahmani, F. Jahanmard, A. Hassani Najafabadi, J. Flapper, O. Dogan, A. Khodaei, G. Storm, M. Croes, M. C. Kruyt, D. Gawlitta, H. Weinans, E. Mastrobattista, S. Amin Yavari
European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2025, vol. 208

Fellowships & Awards

2024: NWO SUMMIT grant DRIVE-RM (Consortium PI, €37.5M)

2024: TKI/HealthHolland grant 'Wishing Table', (co-applicant, €800,000)

2024: ZonMW (Care Research Netherlands & Medical Sciences of Dutch Research Council) Open competition grant ‘NutriBone’, (lead applicant, €790,000)

2023: RegMed XB/Strategic Vascular Alliance Valorisation Voucher (lead, €25,000)

2022: NWO-TTW Open Technology Program 'Bridging the gap: aXelerated Large bone defect healing (XLbone)' No. 19260 (lead applicant, € 839,935)

2018: H2020-MSCA-COFUND 'RESCUE' No. 801540 (co-applicant, € 3M)

2017: NWO Gravitation program 'MDR: Materials-driven research' (faculty member, € 18.8M)

2017: AO grant (AOCMF-17-17G) ‘MACRON: Mandibular Condyle Regeneration’ (€ 350,000)

2016: AO Foundation start-up grant (S-16-130G) ‘Clinical translation of endochondral bone regeneration’ (€ 107,000)

2016: Selected for the Research Talent Program of the UMC Utrecht

2014: Internal grant of UMC Utrecht for translational research (€ 33,300)

2013: NWO (Dutch Science Foundation) Graduate Program grant (€ 800,000)

2012: Selected for the Steyn Parvé program for stimulation of excellent female scientists of UMC Utrecht

2010: Veni: personal innovational incentive grant entitled ‘Mimicking nature: growing bone from cartilage’ was awarded by STW (Dutch technology foundation) (€250,000)

2008: Award for best thesis at the faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology

2000: Award for internship at foreign institute (Eindhoven University of Technology)