The Arthritis Research UK Centre for Osteoarthritis (OA) Pathogenesis was first established in 2013 to identify new targets in the disease and create a seamless pipeline between laboratory discovery and clinical trials.
OA is the most common, yet one of the most neglected diseases of rheumatology, affecting over 8 million people in the UK. As with all diseases, it is important to understand the underlying pathways that drive the condition before drug treatments can be designed.
The Centre has had several successes in this area so far and has built an international reputation which has attracted excellent students, visiting workers and research fellows.
The Centre is delighted to receive further funding from Arthritis Research UK to continue this important work. Professor Tonia Vincent, Director of the Centre said:
"This grant has given us the opportunity to contribute to international efforts to understand early molecular pathways in OA. We are now in a position to move these forward to assess their suitability as targets in human disease. The next 5 years will be an exciting time for all of us and, we hope, a cause for optimism for our millions of OA sufferers."
Over the next five years, the Centre will focus its efforts in select areas of the disease, such as how tissues of the joint respond to injury, and on those areas where the Centre can expect to have the biggest impact, such as discovering new ways to image early damage in OA joints.
Although large scale clinical trials are still a little way off, the Centre believes that by the end of this grant, it will have tested two or three targets in groups of OA patients.
