Research Projects

Osteoarthritis is by far the most common disease afflicting the musculo-skeletal system. At present this disease is only treated symptomatically and in extreme cases by prosthetic replacement. No disease modifying therapy is available. In this proposal I plan to investigate if ectopic exposure of articular cartilage to BMP signaling can induce osteoarthritis in mouse. Based on several lines of argument we hypothesize that adult stage trans-differentiation of articular/permanent cartilage, induced by BMP signaling, causes osteoarthritis. If this hypothesis turns out to be true it can immediately suggest possible disease modifying therapy for osteoarthritis.