Ferenc Toth
University of Minnesota, MN·Medicine & Clinical Research
Osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) is a joint disease of children and young adults. Flaps or fragments of cartilage and bone loosen inside the joint, causing pain and disability and raising the risk of early osteoarthritis.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
osteochondritis dissecans
osteochondrosis
epiphyseal cartilage
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Relate the severity of blood-supply injury in the femoral trochlear growth cartilage to the formation and progression of early OCD lesions, using a pig model.
- Determine how low- versus high-impact mechanical stress affects the formation of silent osteochondrosis lesions and their progression to clinical OCD in pigs.
- Define characteristic gene expression profiles across OCD lesion types to show how blood-supply failure and mechanical stress shape the disease course.
More about the research
Earlier studies showed that it starts silently, when a small patch of growth cartilage dies because its blood supply fails. Some of these patches heal and others become painful disease. Why they take different paths is not known.
Why it matters
OCD causes joint pain and disability in children and young adults and can lead to early osteoarthritis. Learning how blood-supply failure and joint stress drive the disease could inform treatment decisions for these patients and support controlled exercise as part of non-surgical care. The findings may also apply to related childhood disorders such as Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Harry Kim
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether washing damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) and dead-cell debris out of necrotic bone reduces harmful inflammatory macrophage responses, using a piglet model of femoral head osteonecrosis and lab-dish experiments.
Matthew B Fisher
North Carolina State University, NC·Biomedical Engineering
Determine how ACL reconstruction technique (epiphyseal, complete transphyseal or partial transphyseal, differing in how they cross the bone's growth plate) affects knee stability and joint degeneration at different stages of skeletal maturity, using a growing pig model.
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
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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