$3M NIH Grant to Study Cartilage Degeneration and Knee Osteoarthritis
An interdisciplinary team spanning Biomedical Engineering, Exercise and Sports Science, Biostatistics and the Thurston Arthritis Research Center has received a new 5-year, $3M R01 Grant from the National Institutes of Health titled “Discovering the Mechanisms Linking Gait to Osteoarthritis Onset and Progression.”
The project will be led by Co-Principal Investigators Dr. Jason Franz (Associate Professor in BME) and Dr. Brian Pietrosimone (Professor in Exercise and Sport Science) and will see pivotal contributions from BME Associate Professors Dr. Brian Diekman and Dr. David Lalush as well as from Dr. Todd Schwartz (Professor of Biostatistics) and Dr. Lara Longobardi (Associate Professor of Medicine).
Together, the research team will investigate the underlying mechanistic pathway to explain how aberrant knee joint loading in walking alters the mechanical, biophysical and biological properties of tibiofemoral articular cartilage in individuals at risk for knee osteoarthritis. The researchers noted “Establishing this mechanistic pathway is the single most important milestone toward advancing precision gait retraining as an effective strategy for preventing knee osteoarthritis.”