Along with his colleagues, Dr. Best will use one grant to develop targeted treatments for individuals with knee osteoarthritis.
“We have traditionally thought of osteoarthritis as a degenerative disease. Cartilage is breaking down and bone spurs are getting in the joint space area, so that’s true,” Dr. Best said in an Aug. 31 press release from the university. “But to the point about different phenotypes, we also know that inflammation in many cases plays a far greater role than we ever thought in the progression of OA.”
Dr. Best and his colleague, Anthony Griswold, MD, assistant professor of orthopedics, will lead the research on the project.
The second grant will focus on pain associated with knee osteoarthritis and how it can be fixed by studying the infrapatellar fat pad.
The NIH gave the university the grants after scoring their research as having high scientific potential during the grant proposal period.
