In August, we brought you ourfirst investigator spotlight on Dr. Cho, one of our 11 researchers to receive funding for scientific research earlier this year. We’ve chosen the brightest minds in the field and the projects they are working on are truly innovative. Today, we are spotlighting another investigator to learn more about his project.
Meet Dr. Herb Sun, associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Sun’s area of research at Einstein is developing preventive and therapeutic strategies for musculoskeletal disorders. Dr. Sun’s project with the Arthritis Foundation is named “A novel formulation forOsteoarthritis(OA) prevention and treatment”. Simply put, his project consists of creating an innovative compound to test the effectiveness in 1) preventing or delaying the onset of OA and 2) mitigating OA disease progression and relieving OA-related pain symptoms in post-traumatic (PT) model of OA. The innovative compound is made up of four nutraceutical compounds, named C’-CEO. Preliminary studies have shown that this combination of compounds taken orally mitigated OA development in mice with post-traumatic OA.
Dr. Sun is hopeful the C’-CEO treatment will show statistically significant efficacies in mitigating OA disease onset and progression over his two-year project. If successful, this project will help determine the best dosage and ratio of medication in future preclinical and clinical studies.
This is not Dr. Sun’s first research project with the Arthritis Foundation, in fact Dr. Sun is very involved with the Foundation and participates in his localWalk to Cure Arthritis. When asked why he focuses on OA, he says “OA is a devastating disease that affects so many people, and currently has no cure or effective treatment. Therefore, I spend a lot of research effort into determining the mechanisms underlying the development of OA.”
The arthritis community is lucky to have such dedicated scientists, researchers and doctors looking for better diagnostics, treatments and a cure.