Towards Imaging Biomarkers for Osteoarthritis: Surprises, Challenges, and Opportunities |
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| Launch in standalone player | |
| Air date: | Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 3:00:00 PM |
| Category: | Wednesday Afternoon Lectures |
| Description: | Many new therapeutic strategies have been and are being developed to correct, prevent, or slow the progression of osteoarthritis (OA). Our ability to evaluate the efficacy of these techniques, or to determine the situations for which they might provide the most benefit, critically depends on diagnostic measures that can serve as proxies or “biomarkers” for the present or predicted state of the cartilage. Accordingly, much research over the past decade has been devoted to the development of biomarkers for OA, including considerable efforts towards developing imaging biomarkers for OA.
Biomarker development requires two phases of validation. The first is technical validity: is the marker measuring what it aims to measure? The second it pathophysiologic validity: is the information provided by the marker of pathophysiological or clinical use? Many of the magnetic resonance imaging techniques that have been emerging over the past decades appear promising in that they have shown technical validity in measuring the morphologic and molecular state of cartilage, and with emerging clinical studies, efforts are beginning to offer evidence regarding pathophysiological validity. As a case study, this talk will focus on biomarkers for glycosaminoglycan (GAG). In addition to illustrating technical and pathophysiological validity, and some of the surprising insights that have come along the way, we will also explore the way in which such biomarkers might change the scientific and clinical paradigm for advancing our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of osteoarthritis. Martha Gray recently stepped down after nearly 13 years as Director of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Division of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She holds the J.W. Kieckhefer Professorship and is a Professor in HST and in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. With her appointment as the director of HST, Prof. Gray became the first woman to lead a science/engineering department at MIT. HST is nearly a 40 year old collaboration between MIT and Harvard Medical School for research and education to solve major problems in medicine. HST does this by creating a community of engineers, scientists, physicians, and business leaders. This community is established through multi-disciplinary and multiprofessional environments – in the classrooms, hospital rooms, and laboratories. The students graduate with MD’s, PhD’s, S.M.s, MBA’s or some combination, and they come out unusually well prepared to lead and innovate. As director, Prof. Gray shepherded the vigorous growth of HST, so that now it boasts over 400 students, 65 faculties, and nearly 200 affiliated faculties. She has established several major new research and educational programs. For example, she initiated, with colleagues at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, a Biomedical Enterprise Program to bring future business leaders into together with HST’s scientist’s engineers and physicians. In partnership with local teaching hospitals (Massachusetts General Hospital, Children’s Hospital, Boston and Brigham and Women’s Hospital), she championed the creation of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, and programs in Biomedical Informatics and Bio-micro-electrical systems (BioMEMs) each involving faculty and training students from Harvard and MIT. Most recently, under sponsorship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) she has launched a new initiative to bring biomedical training to graduate students other departments at MIT and is working with the Government of India to establish the HST model in India. Her research centers on ways to diagnose and treat cartilage degeneration (arthritis). Most recently, she and her group created a nondestructive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method for assessing cartilage, now being used by many in industry and academia to provide a window into how disease and therapeutic strategies affect cartilage tissue per se. It offers an alternative to radiography that is particularly valuable for early diagnosis and therapy. The significance of her accomplishments was recently recognized by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and Orthopedic Research Society’s, Kappa Delta Award. Teaching and mentoring are high priorities. Prof. Gray has taught a wide variety of courses including Circuits and Systems, Quantitative Physiology, and Renal Pathophysiology. Prof. Gray and her colleagues also established a popular mentoring program called BioMatrix that invites undergraduates, graduate and medical students, and professionals together; bound by an interest in life sciences, these scientists, engineers, physicians and business people meet monthly over dinner, and in small groups, as desired, at other times. Prof. Gray’s training includes a B.S. in Computer Sciences from Michigan State University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in Medical Engineering from HST. Following postdoctoral work at Tufts University and the State University of New York Stony Brook, she joined the MIT faculty in HST and MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1987. The NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series includes weekly scientific talks by some of the top researchers in the biomedical sciences worldwide. |
| Author: | Martha Gray, Ph.D., Harvard-MIT, Cambridge, MA |
| Runtime: | 60 minutes |
| Download: | Download
Video How to download a Videocast |
| CIT File ID: | 14863 |
| CIT Live ID: | 7028 |
| Permanent link: | http://videocast.nih.gov/launch.asp?14863 |
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Enhanced Audio Podcast | 1:05:36 |
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Enhanced Video Podcast | 1:05:36 | |