Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Articular cartilage injury is a major risk factor for the development of osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of arthritis of the joints. Approximately 10-25% of the world's population suffers from OA. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, the prevalence of OA is expected to rise given that one in every four people will hold the status of a senior citizen by 2041. Annual healthcare costs related to arthritis in Canada are in excess of $6.4 billion. Early stages of OA are directly related to cartilage defects that occur following joint injury. Unfortunately, cartilage defects do not heal because cartilage lacks blood supply. Advanced OA is treated with a total joint replacement surgery using a synthetic device. While these are generally successful, they suffer from short-term device failure and lack the longevity of healthy human tissue. There is currently no known cure for OA, and there are no known treatments that can reverse OA once it has initiated. Early biological intervention may mitigate the chronic effects of early OA, but current treatment techniques are limited with poor success rates. To address these limitations, the use of living cells to form new cartilage has emerged as a promising strategy. However, this approach requires cells with an increased capacity to form cartilaginous tissue. We have discovered and developed a method to reproducibly produce stem cells from bone marrow that are capable of forming joint cartilage in the laboratory. This method involves culturing stem cells in a laboratory environment with reduced oxygen levels. However, we have not yet evaluated the capacity of these cells to form cartilage in animal joints. The study proposed in this application aims to evaluate the efficacy of stem cells isolated through our novel method to form articular cartilage after transplantation into cartilage defects of sheep knee joints.