THE JOINT ATLAS: A CELLULAR MAP OF KEY ANATOMICAL STRUCTURES IN THE HUMAN SYNOVIAL JOINT DURING DEVELOPMENT AND IN HEALTHY ADULTS.

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Diseases of the joints represent a considerable global economic burden, accounting for 5 of the top 15 causes of years lived with disability in well-resourced health systems. And yet in the 21st Century we still do not know exactly how many different types of cells make up a joint and how they change during development and in disease. The advent of minimally invasive ultrasound based methods to isolate and analyse tissue from human joints combined with the ability to understand in great details all the genes that an individual cells can express has now enabled for the first time scientist to compile a synovial map of cells involved in diseases such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis We now plan to apply the same techniques that we have developed to look at diseased join tissue to normal developing and adult tissue in order to composed a joint "atlas" that can connect the genes that we know cause disease to the cells that are responsible for the tissue damage in many forms of arthritis. We are currently at the stage where the best atlas we have of the joint is like the medieval map of the world; the "mappa mundi"; We propose that our work will lead to a "GPS enabled google map" of human joints; fully fit for us to explore, explain and permit development of new treatments for diseases of the human joint in the 21st century.