New device lays groundwork for osteoarthritis treatment: King’s College London research

This is a combined study by King’s College London, Boston University, and the University of Southern Denmark. It is published in Nature Communications.

Study in UK: King’s College London conducted a research with other universities including the University of Southern Denmark and Boston University. It found that a new device laid the groundwork for future treatment of osteoarthritis.

In the first of its kind, without using limiting fluorescent labels, the device can show the molecular structure of deep tissue. It can reduce the costs of tissue production by half and can boost tissue engineering usage.

Dr Mads Bergholt, Reader in Biophotonics at King’s College London, said “Tissue engineering has the potential to be life changing for many patients. Approximately, one in five people aged 45 suffer from osteoarthritis in the UK, and cartilage in the knee has no way of replacing itself. Transplantation with tissue engineered constructs could help solve that... By imaging such tissues without killing the cells, for the first time, researchers will be able to have the confidence that a transplant will work for half the cost.”

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"This system opens several possibilities for tissue imaging not only in tissue engineering but also in cancer applications and autoimmune diseases. For the first time Raman is not only a primarily surface sensitive technology, now we can see through larger tissues with actual spatial information on where specific signals originate,” said Dr Martin Hedegaard, Associate Professor of Biophotonics at the University of Southern Denmark.

One King's Impact Fund grants more than £440,000 in awards

The award has been granted to nine project teams working to find solutions of most pressing global issues.

Talking about the awards process, Professor ‘Funmi Olonisakin, Vice President (International, Engagement & Service), “We know that there is appetite for and experience of impact-focused work already at King’s. The selection panel for the fund were impressed with the quality of the submissions, with many proposals understanding the relevance of engaging a mix of expertise from the start, working locally to achieve something global. However, the purpose of this fund, and the wider approach, is to maximise and unlock even more interdisciplinary impact-focused work, as well as the sharing of best practice.”

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