OAinject

Background

Osteoarthritis is a heterogeneous and invalidating disease of the joint characterized by gradual joint deterioration associated with moderate to severe pain impacting almost all daily activities of affected patients. In the Netherlands alone, 1.2 million patients suffer daily from the consequences of this disease, with higher prevalence in women and in citizens with low socioeconomic status. Despite its high prevalence the disease still cannot be treated other than by palliative management or invasive joint replacement surgery at end-stage disease. Various hurdles have hampered the development and clinical introduction of so-called disease-modifying osteoarthritic drugs (DMOADs). The aim of the OAinject project is to engineer new diagnostic and treatment technologies that can address these hurdles in 3 areas; 1) technologies for early diagnosis and patient stratification; 2) technologies for intra-articular injection treatment with customized controlled release strategies, and 3) the engineering of a new human model for studying disease mechanisms and evaluating new treatments.
 

Main goals

The aim of this program is to address the osteoarthritis pandemic by addressing key hurdles currently hampering the development and clinical introduction of Disease Modifying Osteoarthritic Drugs (DMOADs). The consortium, will focus on:
1)    Develop model and tools for the early assessment and phenotyping of osteoarthritis
2)    Generate Early assessment and phenotyping of osteoarthritis
3)    Build and validate next generation fully human model of the joint