OSTEOARTHRITIS: A HEALTH PROBLEM WITHOUT A GOOD TREATMENT
There is still no medication that slows down or cures osteoarthritis, only pain relief and symptom management. At TopTreat, we are working on a smart solution: repurposing existing drugs as a potential treatment for osteoarthritis, because developing new medication takes a lot of time and money. By reusing medicines, we hope to make a suitable drug for osteoarthritis available faster.
HOW DO WE WANT TO TEST OSTEOARTHRITIS MEDICATION WITHOUT USING ANIMALS?
A major challenge in testing medications is that testing on humans is not immediately possible. Therefore, we often start with laboratory models and animal testing. Unfortunately, these methods do not sufficiently predict how effective a drug will be in patients. To improve this, we are developing a knee joint-on-chip: an innovative miniature model of the knee joint.
We create small models from pieces of rubber—chips—of parts of the knee joint, such as cartilage, the cruciate ligament, and the joint capsule. These chips contain tiny chambers—as thin as a few hairs—in which we place patient material to recreate the knee joint outside the body. This patient material is, for example, leftover tissue after knee replacement surgery. With these chips, we can then study the effects of (over)loading or inflammation on the development of osteoarthritis, without using laboratory animals. An example of what this chip might look like is shown in the image below.
PUZZLING WITH MODEL TISSUES TO REPLICATE A KNEE JOINT IN THE LAB
So far, we have succeeded in replicating individual tissues. The next step? Bringing everything together on one platform – the joint-on-a-chip. Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle: individual tissue models are the puzzle pieces, and the platform ensures they work together like a real joint.
First, we focus on replicating a healthy knee, because that’s where osteoarthritis begins. By then adding small disturbances, we learn more about how osteoarthritis develops and can test whether medication is effective. Ultimately, these chips make it possible to study existing drugs faster and more accurately. We therefore hope that this model will replace animal testing in the long term, but more importantly: that this model will improve our understanding of osteoarthritis so much that we can significantly reduce its impact.
