Roland Klar

Postdoctoral Fellow

Phone: 816-235-2100
rkyh7@umkc.edu

Dr. Roland Klar is a Biomedical/Bioengineering Scientist specializing in the field of Tissue Engineering. His primary goal is to unravel the conundrum of temporal and spatial signaling patterns during the formation of bone and other tissue types in vivo in order to develop (1) reliable ex vivo human tissue models to help more effectively test various implants and their response prior to clinical use, (2) to discover how to more efficiently and rapidly regenerate bone/other super complex tissue in humans and (3) to develop next generation clinical therapies in the field of to tissue/organ printing and clinical care.

Roland grew up in the Republic of South Africa where he graduated with a BSc at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in Cellular Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, and Developmental Biology. He went on to do an MSc in Anatomical Sciences looking at tooth regeneration and finally also earned his PhD at this university in 2014 in the field of Cellular and Molecular Biology looking at signal transduction pathways during the induction of bone formation by coral-derived devices and certain TGF-b isoforms. After a subsequent postdoctoral fellowship assessing orthotopic bone regeneration and HIV induced nephritis in Southern Africans, he then joined the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany, where he worked in the Department of Orthopedics as a scientist and group leader of Regenerative Medicine on the development of ex vivo human-based bone and articular cartilage models using bioreactors and investigating the temporal and spatial signaling cascade during cellular/tissue morphogenesis. The work continues now in the Department of Oral and Craniofacial Sciences in the School of Dentistry of the University of Missouri-Kansas City where under the supervision of Prof. Stefan Lohfeld the years of cumulative research are paving the way towards the next generation of smart biomimetic biomaterials that with time will generate new craniofacial regenerative therapies that through precise and guided temporal and spatial signaling patterning, will someday fully and properly regenerate various tissue types, clinically.