National Institutes of Health grant to fund Colorado State University study of faster, more complete healing of joint injuries

(Via Press Release from CSU)

FORT COLLINS – A Colorado State University veterinarian has been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a gene therapy approach to help heal cartilage and prevent osteoarthritis in horses, potentially leading to scientific methods that also may help humans.

The grant, which is $678,000 over five years, will investigate the success of treating joint injuries with a protein injected into injured joints within a virus-like agent called a viral vector.

Cartilage injuries in equine athletes are often career-ending because cartilage heals on only a limited basis. Healing is limited because a specific kind of protein or growth factor, called insulin-like growth factor, is not as available in the joint and cartilage as they are in other areas of the body. Growth factors signal the body to heal because they are responsible for a number of cellular functions, such as those that produce healthy tissue or matrix around the cells within cartilage to help heal injuries. They also trigger cells in cartilage to survive, divide and multiply.

"The lack of healing leads to cartilage degeneration and progression of osteoarthritis," said Dr. Laurie Goodrich, a veterinarian specializing in equine lameness and surgery at Colorado State University. She is also a professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences and sees equine patients in the university's James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Goodrich is the principal researcher on the grant. "This prevents many horses from returning to athletic performance events."

Joint injury and subsequent osteoarthritis is the most common reason for ending careers in all equine athletes including racehorses, hunter and jumper horses and Western performance athletes.

The growth factor called insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-I, helps cartilage develop and, studies have shown, promotes healing of injured cartilage. However, researchers have not been able to develop a way to maintain enough IGF-I in an injured joint to help it heal. Goodrich and a team of researchers hope that using a viral vector to deliver DNA that increases production of IGF-I, a protein, will increase healing in damaged joint tissues.

The researchers will test the concept in a laboratory setting before beginning clinical trials on horses with joint injuries.

"Ultimately, our goal is to more effectively treat these types of injuries and return horses to their previous levels of performance, whether to the racetrack, show ring or the trail," Goodrich said. "While the study focuses on horses, the results may ultimately have the potential to help improve human cartilage health and reduce osteoarthritis that often follows a cartilage injury. This is good news for horses and humans alike as advances in joint research in horses will likely apply to humans."

The Federal Drug Administration has recently recognized that the horse is an excellent representative study model for cartilage injury and osteoarthritis in people.

Dr. Wayne McIlwraith, director of the Gail Holmes Equine Orthopaedic Research Center, and Dr. R. Jude Samulski, director of the Gene Therapy Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will co-mentor the project.

The project will involve collaborations with bio-informatics and gene research experts across Colorado State University, including Ken Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, and Hariharan Iyers, a statistics professor.

Also collaborating are Aravind Asokan, Jeff Beecham and Tal Kafri from the University of North Carolina; Dr. Alan Nixon from Cornell University; and Dr. Chisa Hidaka and Chris Chen at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

Colorado State Equine Vet Experiences Tornado’s Effect on His Own Horses

Last week, a tornado ripped through Windsor, Colorado, not far from the campus of Colorado State University and the vet school’s James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital. As you mght expect, the hospital staff was busy with trauma cases for the next few days.

But one of the vets there would have stories to tell of his own horses and how a tornado can threaten your equine friends.

Dr. Bruce Connally, a veterinarian on the hospital's Equine Field Service, hit the road and treated five horses in the Windsor area who were injured in the tornado -- three client horses and, yes, two of his own.

Most of the horses injured in the tornado suffered from multiple lacerations caused by flying debris. These are intensive injuries with considerable trauma for the patients and grave concern for the owner. But Connally’s worries would be magnified by the danger to his own animals.

While treating a client's horse in Windsor with the help of senior veterinary students, Connally received word that his own property in Wellington, Colorado was damaged and three of his seven horses could not be found. The tornado had lifted one of his foals right out of the corral, and deposited him unharmed on a nearby county road. By the time the vet arrived arrived at his home, his neighbors had found all of his horses and returned them safely to him. Other than minor lacerations and bruising, all were fine.

"The most amazing thing about the experience has been how the community has pulled together," Connally, also a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said. "I've seen neighbors reaching out to neighbors and that's one of the only ways to survive this kind of event. I certainly appreciated my neighbors helping out with my animals while I was treating others."