Earlier this year, weawarded funding to six scientistsfor projects submitted that show remarkable innovations and steps towards finding a cure for arthritis and related diseases. For the first time, we included patient input in selecting the projects that showed the most promise and meant the most to them.
What if injured joints could heal themselves before they developosteoarthritis(OA)? Dr. James Martin’s current 3-year Arthritis Foundation-funded project, “Engineering Endogenous Cartilage Repair,” is trying to do just that- find ways to help joints heal before developing OA.
Dr. Martin and his team use special goats that have defects in areas of the thigh bones and cartilage, just above the knee. This closely mimics knee injuries that are seen in humans. The defects are surgically repaired with a hydrogel matrix that contains two important ingredients: repair cell attractant and growth factor. The repair cell attractant causes repair cells, called chondrogenic progenitor cells (CPCs), to migrate into the hydrogel. CPCs naturally occur in the cartilage. The growth factor, which is time-released over 10 days, causes the CPCs in the hydrogel to multiply and repair the injury with new cartilage.
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. James Martin
Trillions of bacteria live in or on your body. There are actually as many bacteria in your body as cells in your body. Fortunately, for most of us, most bacteria that live within us are helpful, not harmful. We call these bacteria commensal bacteria. Dr. Martin Kriegel and his team have been studying these bacteria, and more specifically, a protein that humans and bacteria produce, called Ro60, that plays a role in the development of lupus.
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Martin Kriegel
Dr. Rae Yeung believes in collaboration and building networks to solve problems. Her current 3-year Arthritis Foundation-funded project, “Precision Decisions to STOP JIA”, is an example of that. The goal is to develop a tool that will predict treatment response to specific drugs. Dr. Yeung’s study focuses on a group of high-risk children withpolyarthritis, one of the most severe forms of childhood arthritis that affects many joints and is difficult to treat.
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Rae Yeung
This story started with a dozen male research mice survivors from hurricane Sandy in 2012. The storm devastated Dr. Bruce Cronstein’s research lab, but born from the destruction was Dr. Cronstein’s 5-year Arthritis Foundation Investigator-funded project, “The Role of Adenosine Receptors in Osteoarthritis.”
He described the damage: “Our labs were closed for nearly a year and a half. We lost a lot of our animal facilities. However, once a lot of the debris was cleared, we were able to go in and found that some of our mice had survived.”
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Bruce Cronstein
In February, we reported on Dr. Farshid Guilak’scurrent Arthritis Foundation-funded trailblazing project, “Engineering New Biologic Therapies for Arthritis.”
Dr. Guilak’s work is published in the journalStem Cell Reports. The paper, entitled “Genome engineering of stem cells for autonomously regulated, closed-loop delivery of biologic drugs,” describes the research team’s method of engineering (reprogramming) stem cells to become “smart stem cells” that will sense inflammation and deliver biologic drugs where they are most needed. The smart stem cells-biologic drug combination is then injected into an arthritic joint.
Continue readingArthritis Foundation Investigator Developing Arthritis Vaccine
If you haveosteoporosisyou’ve probably heard of, and may have been treated with, a class of drugs that are used to prevent and treat bone loss:bisphosphonates. Dr. Tuhina Neogi and her research team are using new methods to look at how the long-term effects of using these drugs may be related to the progression of kneeosteoarthritis(OA).
Dr. Neogi’s 2-year Arthritis Foundation-funded project, “Bisphosphonate Effects in Knee Osteoarthritis,” is looking at the relationship of bisphosphonate treatment and the structural changes in the knee associated with OA progression. To do this, Dr. Neogi and her team are looking at how knee joint space width, three-dimensional (3D) bone shape, and bone marrow lesions change in OA patients over time.
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Tuhina Neogi
What do skin and cartilage have in common? It depends on who you ask. Dr. Veronique Lefebvre, a researcher at Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, is currently working on a 2016 foundation-funded project called “Quality-by-Design approach to create articular cartilage from pluripotency” that connects the dots between skin and cartilage. Dr. Lefebvre and her team are developing a protocol that starts with skin cells and ends with knee cartilage.
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Veronique Lefebvre
Dr. Jose U. Scher, a current Arthritis Foundation-funded investigator, has been looking at the relationship between bacteria and inflammatory diseases for more than 10 years. Dr. Scher’s current Arthritis Foundation funded project, “Pan-Microbiome in At-Risk Subjects and New-Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA),” looks at the relationship of bacteria (or “microbiome” in the mouth, lungs, and intestines) and the development ofRA.
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Jose Scher
近年来，对生活在我们体内的细菌的研究取得了进展，并在科学界获得了尊重。这些细菌大多数生活在我们的肠道中，科学家认为它们以多种方式塑造我们的健康——有些是好的，有些是坏的。弗吉尼亚·克劳斯博士目前正在她为期两年的关节炎基金会资助的“低等级内毒素血症在骨关节炎中的作用”项目中研究细菌。她的项目研究的是一种由有害细菌产生的分子。
Continue readingResearchers on the Path to a Cure – Spotlight on Dr. Virginia Kraus