This technology is a quantitative imaging assay for detecting cartilage crosslinking levels in a joint for early detection of osteoarthritis.
Current methods to diagnose osteoarthritis rely on detecting collagen degradation products in bodily fluids such as urine or serum. These methods are only sensitive enough to detect late stage osteoarthritis and cannot investigate a single joint, limiting opportunity for interventions prior to needing a joint replacement. Osteoarthritis causes a breakdown of collagen crosslinking in the cartilage of a joint, but there are currently no methods for directly measuring this in vivo and during the long asymptomatic early development of the disease.
This technology is an assay that uses Raman spectroscopy arthroscopically to detect collagen crosslinking in individual joints. As such, this spectroscopy technique can generate spectral maps of crosslinking intensity to identify areas of low crosslink density. The breakdown of collagen crosslinking in the cartilage of a joint occurs in osteoarthritis, so this technology can be used in a clinical setting to track changes in a patient’s tissue over time and detect osteoarthritis in the early stages. As a result, this powerful assay provides an effective method for monitoring collagen degradation to detect osteoarthritis even before a patient becomes symptomatic.
This technology has been validated in cartilage thin-films and cartilage explants from immature cows (calves).
Sinisa Vukelic, Ph.D. Gerard Ateshian, Ph.D.
IR CU16290
Licensing Contact: Sara Gusik