The Oxford Centre for OA pathogenesis

The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (KIR) moving to the University of Oxford, to within 200m of the Botnar Institute and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre (NOC) will possibly create the highest concentration of OA researchers, with the broadest range of OA expertise within Europe. The centre of excellence will bring these groups together to optimise current programmes, develop collaborative ventures and create a seamless transition from preclinical findings to clinical validation and translation. In addition we have introduced a number of new initiatives through interactions with groups outside the musculoskeletal arena which are innovative and likely to lead to new discoveries that will benefit patients. The centre contains a high number of academic clinicians, both rheumatologists and orthopaedic surgeons, and this allows us to create a programme that is built around clinically relevant problems organised into a series of work packages. This helps to integrate members from different disciplines across the centre and to keep the focus of each work package translational. Novel outcomes that are likely to be successful within the first term of this grant include validated targets for preventing injury-associated OA, new imaging probes for diagnosing early disease, and soluble biomarkers and morphological factors that predict disease progression.