Cora Ferguson, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Oregon, has received IFER funding for her project, "Engineering a hormonally tunable cartilage microphysiological system to investigate the role of estrogen in inflammatory cartilage degeneration." Osteoarthritis, a progressive cartilage disease often triggered by joint injuries, disproportionately affects postmenopausal women—suggesting that hormonal factors influence disease susceptibility. Estrogen has demonstrated protective effects on cartilage, yet its role in modulating inflammation-driven degeneration remains poorly understood. Progress has been hindered by reliance on animal models that fail to replicate dynamic hormonal fluctuations and human-specific tissue responses. Cora is pioneering a first-of-its-kind Cartilage Hormone Microphysiological System (CHo-MPS) using patient-derived data and human chondrocytes to precisely modulate estrogen levels and inflammatory stimuli. This scalable, non-animal platform will illuminate sex-specific mechanisms of cartilage preservation, advance precision medicine approaches, and establish a transferable, ethically grounded model for musculoskeletal research and therapeutic screening.