David Felson
Boston University, MA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis and a leading cause of disability in older adults. Yet there are no drugs that slow it and no biomarkers that track its course.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Biochemistry
- Topics
osteoarthritis
synovial fluid
blood plasma
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Find synovial fluid and plasma proteins associated with worsening knee pain or cartilage damage over 24 months, and replicate the findings in the STEpUP OA consortium.
- Identify plasma proteins associated with multi-site osteoarthritis of the hands and knees to separate systemic from joint-specific disease contributors.
More about the research
One difficulty is telling apart damage caused by stress on a single joint from body-wide (systemic) disease processes. Arthritis that appears in several sites, such as the hands and knees, may reflect such systemic causes. Comparing proteins in synovial fluid, the liquid inside the joint that bathes its tissues, with proteins in blood could separate the two.
Why it matters
Older adults with osteoarthritis currently have only treatments that relieve symptoms, and no tests that predict progression. Protein signatures from joint fluid and blood could become biomarkers for disease burden and worsening. They could also suggest new treatment targets by showing which processes are body-wide and which are specific to the joint.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Xiaoxiao Sun
University of Arizona, AZ·Mathematics & Statistics
Adapt a Transformer-based deep learning model, a neural network suited to complex patterns, to predict new localized, regional or diffuse knee pain from knee MRIs in the Osteoarthritis Initiative cohort.
Sanja Novak
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, AR·Physiology
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.
Lakshmi Nair
University of Connecticut, CT·Biomedical Engineering
Optimize where around the knee a new local anesthetic formulation is injected (periarticular placement), testing injection locations to find the one that gives the longest and strongest relief of osteoarthritis pain.
The school
Boston University: 26 labs on PI Pages, $784M a year on research, 630 research doctorates a year.
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