Advancing osteoarthritis care

Christopher Price joined UD’s biomedical engineering program in fall 2013 as an assistant professor. He is the co-principal investigator on a Department of Defense grant to study the highly targeted delivery of bisphosphonates, a class of traditional osteoporosis drugs, to prevent osteoarthritis from developing after acute traumatic injury. The research team’s preliminary work with animal studies revealed that the FDA approved bisphosphonate zoledronic acid (ZA) rescues post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA), but adversely affects bone health. Price is studying if localized ZA injection can effectively prevent PTOA without hampering the bone’s natural development — research that could significantly affect osteoarthritis treatment. Price has also received a National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases grant in collaboration with others to study the effects of articular cartilage damage in osteoarthritis using spatiotemporal image correlation spectroscopy (STICS), a novel bioimaging technique. Changes in the fluid phase of cartilage are implicated in osteoarthritis so Price and his collaborators will use STICS to make direct real-time measurements of this phase. If successful, STICS will be the first bioimaging approach that provides direct real-time quantification of the fluid movement in cartilage and the changes of its solid matrix.