Sanja Novak
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, AR·Physiology
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease in which joint cartilage wears away, causing inflammation, stiffness, pain and loss of function. It affects more than 630 million adults worldwide, and about 12% of cases follow joint injury.
- Fields
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
osteoarthritis
articular cartilage
synovium
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Evaluate how blood vessels in the synovium and subchondral bone change during OA development. Test whether early microvascular damage or later synovial angiogenesis drives cartilage damage, including after mechanical-stress knee injury.
- Determine whether increased blood vessel permeability causes OA in animals with previously intact knee joints, and whether unstable, leaky vessels accelerate OA progression after joint trauma.
- Test whether stabilizing blood vessels pharmacologically with Ang1 (angiopoietin-1), which strengthens endothelial tight junctions, can prevent OA or slow its progression.
More about the research
Current treatments only ease pain and inflammation, or replace the joint at late stages. Healthy cartilage has no blood vessels, but the surrounding joint lining (synovium) and the bone beneath the cartilage (subchondral bone) do. In advanced OA, new vessels invade the cartilage. This project asks whether damage to the joint's small blood vessels is a cause of OA rather than a consequence.
Why it matters
Osteoarthritis disables millions, especially older and obese adults, athletes, military personnel, police and firefighters. Yet no treatment stops the disease itself. If leaky joint blood vessels help trigger OA, stabilizing them, for example with Ang1, could become a new approach for preventing or delaying OA after joint injury.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
X. Lucas Lu
University of Delaware, DE·Biomedical Engineering
Determine whether statin use is linked to lower rates of osteoarthritis in the Delaware population, using a retrospective cohort study of existing health records.
Le Yu
University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Fabricate individual scaffold zones with distinct compositions and collagen fiber orientations by controlling biomimetic mineralization, reproducing the shift from unmineralized cartilage to heavily mineralized subchondral bone.
David Felson
Boston University, MA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify proteins in knee synovial fluid and plasma linked to knee pain and MRI-detected cartilage damage, using SOMAScan aptamer-based proteomics in about 500 paired samples from the MOST cohort.
The school
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences: 7 labs on PI Pages, $227M a year on research, 40 research doctorates a year.
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