Alexander Knights
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
A joint injury, such as a torn ligament, often leads years later to post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). In this painful disease, cartilage wears away, the joint lining becomes inflamed and scarred, and bony growths called osteophytes form.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
post-traumatic osteoarthritis
joint injury
synovium
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Determine how Rspo2-driven Wnt/β-catenin signaling controls the appearance and behavior of scar-promoting synovial cells in PTOA, using transgenic reporter mice, multi-omic analyses and in vitro differentiation assays.
- Characterize how Wnt-active synovial fibroblasts signal to inflammatory macrophages, the immune cells that drive joint damage, using knockout mice and cell crosstalk assays.
- Test how Rspo2 acting through its Lgr receptors promotes osteophyte (bony growth) formation from injury-induced progenitor cells, using tissue-specific gene deletion, reporter mice and in vitro differentiation assays.
More about the research
PTOA affects millions of people, and there is no treatment that slows or stops the disease. One reason is that PTOA involves many joint tissues signaling to each other, and these exchanges are poorly understood.
Why it matters
PTOA is a chronic, disabling joint disease that develops after injury and affects millions of people, with no disease-modifying treatment available. Mapping how Rspo2 and Wnt signaling drive joint scarring, inflammation and abnormal bone growth could point to new drug targets. That could help efforts to develop treatments that slow joint damage in people after joint injuries.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Archana Sanjay
University of Connecticut, CT·Biology
Test whether Rspo2 and Rspo3 are needed in mesenchymal progenitors for fracture healing, by deleting these genes at the time of fracture in mice and assessing repair with microCT, histology and mechanical testing.
X. Lucas Lu
University of Delaware, DE·Biomedical Engineering
Determine whether statin use is linked to lower rates of osteoarthritis in the Delaware population, using a retrospective cohort study of existing health records.
Sanja Novak
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, AR·Physiology
Evaluate how blood vessels in the synovium and subchondral bone change during OA development. Test whether early microvascular damage or later synovial angiogenesis drives cartilage damage, including after mechanical-stress knee injury.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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