Dr Agnes Arthur leads the Musculoskeletal Cellular Communication (MCC) research group within the Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) Laboratory located at SAHMRI. Dr Arthur received her PhD (2007) from the School of Molecular and Biomedical Science at the University of Adelaide and subsequently undertook a postdoctoral position at the MSC laboratory at SA Pathology with Prof Stan Gronthos. Here she continued her interest in characterising a mesenchymal stem cell population called dental pulp stem cells (DPSC) as a potential therapy for neurological disorders. This work resulted in two patents that are currently licensed to Mesoblast Ltd. Dr Arthur also examined the maintenance of DPSC within their niche in response to Eph/ephrin signalling and its potential role in dental repair. In 2009 the direction of the research shifted towards understanding the importance of cell-cell interactions and signalling mediating the function of bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells. In 2013 Dr Arthur became a Mary Overton Research Fellow and an International Federation of Musculoskeletal Research Societies (IFMRS) Fellow in 2018.

Our group is interested in the communication between mesenchymal stem cells and their surrounding microenvironment. More specifically, our research centres on understanding the cellular (mesenchymal (bone/ dental), haematopoietic, immune, neural) communication within neural and skeletal tissue, with a focus on Eph-ephrin signalling in bone metabolism under steady state, disease and trauma induced conditions, including osteoporosis and femoral fracture repair.