Systems biology driven tissue engineering

关节炎使400多万加拿大人残疾，造成疼痛，限制生活质量，并对医疗保健费用产生重大影响（截至2000年，加拿大每年为44亿美元）。目前的治疗方法包括使用止痛剂来减轻疼痛，在严重的情况下，需要更换髋关节和膝关节等承重关节。不幸的是，这些人工植入物经常失败，因为制造它们的材料与我们的身体不相容。我们需要的是更好的药物治疗，让患者再生软骨或发展生物关节（膝盖和臀部等）。我们的项目旨在了解软骨细胞（关节细胞）从两种潜在的替代细胞来源（多能干细胞和间充质基质细胞）的发育，然后改善这些细胞向软骨组织的分化。为此，我们将开发这些干细胞如何分化为软骨和其他细胞的网络（本质上是路线图），然后操纵分化培养以改善将干细胞转化为关节软骨的条件。在此过程中，我们应该确定未来将用于筛选用于替代关节炎患者软骨的药物的药物途径。

Arthritis disables more than 4 million Canadians, causing pain, limiting the quality of life, and having a major impact on health care costs ($4.4 billion/yr in Canada as of 2000) Current treatments involve analgesics to reduce pain, and in severe cases, load-bearing joints such as hips and knees are replaced. Unfortunately, these artificial implants often fail because the material used to make them is incompatible with our bodies. What is needed is either better drug therapies for patients to regrow cartilage or the development of biological joints (knees and hips, etc). Our project is designed to understand the development of cartilage cells (the cells of the joint) from two potential replacement cell sources (pluripotent stem cells and mesenchymal stromal cells) and then improve on the differentiation of these cells into cartilage tissue. To do this, we will develop networks (essentially roadmaps) of how these stem cells differentiate into cartilage and other cells and then manipulate the differentiation cultures to improve conditions to convert the stem cells into joint cartilage. Along the way, we should identify drug pathways that will be used in the future to screen for drugs that will be used to replace cartilage in arthritis patients.