{"id":141255,"date":"2023-06-21T10:57:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T14:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=141255"},"modified":"2023-10-25T11:10:21","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T15:10:21","slug":"aiming-to-bring-oa-to-its-knees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2023\/06\/21\/aiming-to-bring-oa-to-its-knees\/","title":{"rendered":"Aiming to Bring OA to its Knees"},"content":{"rendered":"

NIH grant enables Albro and team to advance first-in-kind scope for early detection of osteoarthritis<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a disease that causes pain, can\u2019t be cured right now, and can\u2019t be diagnosed until it\u2019s too late. But with a research grant from the National Institutes of Health, a team of BU engineers collaborating with clinicians and other experts around the world is developing a groundbreaking weapon in the fight against osteoarthritis (OA).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep getting contacted by orthopedic surgeons in the area who really want to use this in the clinic as soon as possible,\u201d says Assistant Professor Michael Albro<\/a> (ME<\/a>, MSE<\/a>, BME<\/a>), who is the lead PI in an ongoing project to build a noninvasive, light-based arthroscope to gauge the health of cartilage in the knees and other joints. Totaling nearly $3 million, \u201cthis NIH grant will essentially enable us to prove that Raman diagnostic measurements can outperform MRI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MSE
Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A degenerative joint disease that afflicts 32.5 million Americans, OA occurs when articular cartilage\u2014the tissue that cushions the ends of bones at the joint\u2014wears away. It leads to pains and aches and even disability. The tissue loss is irreversible, so eventually an artificial joint is required. That\u2019s a problem when the OA sufferer is a young adult or even a teenager, because artificial joints only last for a couple of decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think of osteoarthritis, you think of older individuals, but the reality is that 24 percent of adults are afflicted with osteoarthritis,\u201d says Albro. \u201cThe burden can at times fall even heavier on younger patients.\u201d Every year, hundreds of thousands of adolescents and young adults suffer sports injuries that can lead to post-traumatic osteoarthritis, says Albro. \u201cAnd they\u2019re not yet eligible for a joint replacement procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soft tissue doesn\u2019t show up very well in MRI or radiography scans, meaning no method currently in use can detect OA early, when there might still be time to intervene. The alternative that Albro and colleagues have crafted uses the principle of Raman scattering. Long in use to date fossils and bust art forgers, a Raman spectroscope shines light on a specimen, counts the tiny number of light particles that undergo a shift in wavelength, and uses that data to assess the specimen\u2019s chemical composition.<\/p>\n

Applying this process to articular cartilage, Albro\u2019s team figured out that Raman scattering would pick up on key biomarkers, measuring the tissue\u2019s composition as well as its mechanical function. With a grant from the Arthritis Foundation, they successfully tested their device\u2014the first-ever Raman arthroscope\u2014in explants in 2021. Now, with the NIH R01 grant, they are testing it in live large animal models, bringing the technology another step closer to the clinic.<\/p>\n

Why build a better arthroscope if cartilage loss can\u2019t be reversed? Two good reasons. First, many scientists are in fact working on methods that might stop OA in its tracks\u2014and some even hope to reverse it\u2014so if the disease could be detected early enough, that would prevent a lot of damage from ever occurring.<\/p>\n

Secondly, many researchers are working on engineering or regenerating tissue to replace the cartilage. Indeed, Albro and many of his colleagues on the Raman arthroscope project are also involved in just such efforts, as part of a two-pronged approach: Their \u201coptical biopsy\u201d device can be used to assess the quality of the replacement tissue that they and others engineer, just as well as it can assess natural tissue.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, one of the key benefits of the [Raman] technology is going to be, for the first time ever, to examine the efficacy of some of these exciting emerging therapies,\u201d says Albro.<\/p>\n

The team includes Professor Mark Grinstaff<\/a> (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED); Research Professor Brian Snyder<\/a> (BME), who is also an orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children\u2019s Hospital; and biophotonics expert Mads Bergholt from King\u2019s College in London, among others\u2014as well as \u201cjust terrific, talented students\u201d from all three ENG departments, says Albro.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are challenging problems that any one of us sitting alone would really not be able to tackle,\u201d says Albro. \u201cThese international, interdisciplinary collaborations are wonderful\u2014but they can also be precarious, given the distance and everyone\u2019s busy schedules. So the magic formula is, you have to really like working together. And we seem to have found this really nice team that\u2019s just really enthusiastic to work together on these projects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NIH grant enables Albro and team to advance first-in-kind scope for early detection of osteoarthritis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":141436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,899,1092,909,908,1042,245],"tags":[1027,656,672],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141255"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141437,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141255\/revisions\/141437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}