Alberta Research Team Tackles Osteoarthritis
New treatments, innovative ways to deliver care
An injection of funding from Alberta Innovates and Pfizer Canada has given an Alberta research team the financial support it needs to develop new treatments for osteoarthritis and innovative ways to deliver care for osteoarthritis sufferers. The team of 36 surgeons, scientists, rehabilitation specialists and health care service designers is investigating the use of stem cells to grow artificial cartilage, developing improved diagnostic tests and researching prevention and risk factors.
The researchers, co-led by ABJHI Executive Director Dr. Cy Frank, will receive $5 million over five years from Alberta Innovates and $500,000 from Pfizer Canada. Their work was formally launched on Sept. 21 with an announcement of the funding.
Use of Stem Cells to Grow Cartilage
David Hart, PhD, is investigating the use of stem cells to grow artificial cartilage in the lab. In collaboration with colleagues in Japan, his team obtains stem cells from the knees of people with osteoarthritis, grows new knee cartilage in the laboratory, and explores how best to boost the stem cells’ ability to grow and become cartilage for transplantation.
“These knee stem cells 'like' to become cartilage. As they grow, we analyze them to see what these cells are really doing, and how they respond to various treatment options,” said Hart, a professor of surgery, medicine, and microbiology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary. “We are also comparing the stem cells of people with osteoarthritis with the stem cells of people who don’t have the disease. We suspect there is a genetic component here, and that some people may have better stem cells than others. We can also use the stem cells for diagnostic purposes to determine what is going on in people with early osteoarthritis. In that instance, stem cells are like the canary in the coal mine, helping us to make decisions on treatments.”
New Drugs and Treatments
Lauren Beaupre, PhD, is studying how to optimize healing and recovery for people whose osteoarthritis (OA) becomes so advanced that they require a hip or knee replacement. As a rehabilitation specialist, Beaupre works on the clinical team that prepares people for surgery, collaborating with surgeons, and creating a ‘pre-hab’ and rehabilitation plan for OA patients.
“My work focuses on getting the absolute best outcomes for people having hip or knee replacements,” said Beaupre, an associate professor in the faculties of rehabilitation medicine, and medicine and dentistry at the University of Alberta. “But at the same time, I can ask patients to donate tissue from their knee or hip surgery so that the scientists on our team can delve deeply into understanding osteoarthritis at the genetic and cellular level so that they can design new drugs and treatments to stop the progression of this disease.”
A Decision Support Tool to Improve Access and Efficiency
Deborah Marshall, PhD, is mapping out an intricate blueprint of the current system of care for people with osteoarthritis in Alberta. Her team is designing a decision support tool with a system dynamic model to explore how the health care system can be transformed to increase access, efficiency, and decrease wait times to foster better outcomes for patients. The work is in partnership with the Alberta Health Services Bone and Joint Clinical Network, and the Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute.
“This type of modeling is used frequently in planning business services and engineering projects. Applying this model to health care allows us to look at the whole system of care and make informed changes to the care pathway with knowledge of the expected impact – on the system, and on people with osteoarthritis,” said Marshall, an associate professor of community health sciences at U of C and Canada Research Chair in Health Systems and Services Research. “This approach allows us to design a system that’s more efficient, sustainable and focused on patient outcomes.”