Chris Dunn: Radiographic Osteoarthritis Progression Can Be Predicted via Pyrosequencing Analysis of Baseline Peripheral Blood

Poster Presenter: Chris Dunn, graduate student, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation

Poster Title: Radiographic Osteoarthritis Progression Can Be Predicted via Pyrosequencing Analysis of Baseline Peripheral Blood

Ignite Session 2C
Saturday, November 12 | 2:20–2:25 p.m. ET | South Philly Stage
All ACR Convergence 2022 poster presentations are available on demand to registered meeting participants through October 31, 2023.

What is your poster about?
Using patterns of specific epigenetic regions from peripheral blood samples, we have created a predictive model that can predict radiographic osteoarthritis progression. More specifically, DNA methylation patterns within the circulating immune cell population can be utilized as biomarkers to discern future radiographic osteoarthritis progressors from non-progressors.

Why did you decide to investigate this topic?
There are currently no clinically available biomarkers for osteoarthritis; thus, it is difficult to identify suitable candidates for clinical trials. This is a major impediment to the creation of disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs.

What are you working on next related to this research?
I am developing a high-throughput, translatable assay using similar modeling approaches with a more robust method (next-generation sequencing).

What excites you most about your work?
This work has the potential to identify novel biomarkers for a disease that affects a significant portion of the world. This work could also lead to better clinical trial design and help us develop disease-modifying therapies for osteoarthritis.