"Without better understanding of what drives the initiation and progression of osteoarthritis, effective treatment has been limited. Initially, we studied what goes wrong in osteoarthritic joints, compared these processes to functional environments, and used this information to develop an immunotherapy cell treatment."
Johanna Bolander, Lead Author, WFIRM
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) scientists have created a promising injectable cell therapy to treat osteoarthritis that both reduces inflammation and also regenerates articular cartilage.
Recently identified by the Food and Drug Administration as a public health crisis, osteoarthritis affects more than 520 million people worldwide who deal with pain and inflammation. Osteoarthritis is typically induced by mechanical or traumatic stress in the joint, leading to damaged cartilage that cannot be repaired naturally.
Osteoarthritis is a disease of the joint system. The joint includes a synovial membrane – a connective tissue that lines the inner surface of the joint. The membrane functions to protect the joint and secretes a lubricating fluid filled with cell elements needed to maintain a healthy environment and to provide friction free movement. In healthy joints when an injury occurs, the body recruits an army of inflammatory cells and sends them to the injury site to contribute to cleaning of the damaged tissues. In the osteoarthritic joint, however, a traumatic injury leads to inflammation of the synovial membrane and cartilage damage.
“With time, the inflammation worsens, leading to degradation of the cartilage lining the joint bones and chronic inflammation in the surrounding tissues. For patients, this causes severe pain, swelling and often limits daily activities,” said co-author Gary Poehling, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist.
For this study, published in Science Advances, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the research team set out to investigate....READ MORE
"Without better understanding of what drives the initiation and progression of osteoarthritis, effective treatment has been limited. Initially, we studied what goes wrong...
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