First person – Aikta Sharma

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Aikta Sharma is first author on ‘ Multiscale molecular profiling of pathological bone resolves sexually dimorphic control of extracellular matrix composition ’, published in DMM. Aikta is a PhD student in the lab of Dr Claire E. Clarkin at the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, investigating the role of osteoblast-derived vascular endothelial growth factor in bone matrix formation.