Osteoarthritis (OA) is a debilitating condition affecting all tissues of articular joints. It is a significant socioeconomic burden in the general population costing the US an estimated $128 billion per year. Current treatments for OA either involve invasive surgical procedures or pharmacological intervention primarily for pain relief; however, effective pain relief for OA is limited and, remarkably, no disease modifying OA drugs are currently FDA approved. With the poor outcomes after current treatment modalities, there is a need to better understand the etiology of OA and to develop novel strategies to prevent or mitigate disease development and progression.
We have been developing a variety of regenerative approaches including microcarrier based stem cell delivery, ECM based therapeutics, and small molecules delivery. In addition we are investigating the role of the lymphatics system both in the disease process and also as a potential therapeutic target. Our work spans tissue culture models, pre-clinical translational models, and clinical trials.