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

关节疾病是一个相当大的全球经济负担，在资源充足的卫生系统中，导致残疾多年的前15个原因中有5个是关节疾病。然而，在21世纪，我们仍然不知道有多少不同类型的细胞组成一个关节，以及它们在发育和疾病过程中如何变化。基于微创超声波的方法分离和分析人类关节组织的出现，再加上对单个细胞可以表达的所有基因的详细了解，使得科学家第一次能够编制涉及骨关节炎和类风湿性关节炎等疾病的细胞的滑膜图谱。我们现在计划将我们开发的相同技术应用到正常发育和成人组织中观察病变组织，以便组成一个关节“图谱”，将我们已知的导致疾病的基因与导致多种形式关节炎的组织损伤的细胞联系起来。我们目前所处的阶段是，我们所拥有的最好的关节地图集就像中世纪的世界地图；“Mappa mundi”；我们建议我们的工作将导致人类关节的“全球定位系统支持的谷歌地图”；完全适合我们探索、解释和允许开发21世纪人类关节疾病的新疗法。

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.