Purmessur and Higuita-Castro receive NIH R61 award

Congratulations to assistant professors Devina Purmessur and Natalia Higuita-Castro, Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) for recently receiving a one- year National Institutes of Health (NIH) R61 award to investigate novel non-viral, non-addictive therapies for low back pain.

The title of the award is ‘Non-viral Reprogramming of Intervertebral Disc Cells for the treatment of Discogenic back pain.’ The award began September 20, 2019 and runs through August 31, 2020, in the amount of $368K. Principal Investigators (Multi-PI): Devina Purmessur and Natalia Higuita-Castro (BME). Co-Investigators: Dr. Safdar Khan, MD (Orthopedics), Daniel Gallego-Perez, assistant professor (BME) Benjamin Walter, assistant professor (BME) and Xiaokui Mo, research assistant professor (Biostatistics). Collaborators: Dr. Sarah Moore, DVM (College of Vet medicine) and Judith Hoyland, professor of Molecular Pathology (University of Manchester, UK).

This research award is supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of NIH. “This is an incredibly important area and this award represents a great collaboration between Engineering, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University,” says Samir Ghadiali, BME department chair. See abstract below for details.

Abstract:

Chronic low back pain exerts a significant socio-economic burden on society and is a major contributor to the growing opioid crisis. This enormous burden is largely because studies have failed to target the underlying mechanisms associated with pain generation. Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is strongly associated with the pathophysiology of low back pain and identifying non-addictive minimally invasive treatments for discogenic back pain (DBP) is a research priority. Pathological IVD changes include extracellular matrix (ECM) breakdown, inflammation and aberrant nerve/vascular ingrowth which have been shown to significantly correlate with pain. Therefore the optimal therapy for DBP would target both structural restoration and reduce the symptoms of pain. This proposal uses a multi-disciplinary approach to determine the effects of non-viral delivery of developmental transcription factors to reprogram diseased nucleus pulposus cells from painful intervertebral discs to a healthy biosynthetically active anti-catabolic/inflammatory/pain phenotype in vitro and in vivo using translational models that will ultimately lead to clinical trials in human patients. Cellular reprogramming of intervertebral disc cells is a novel concept for the treatment of discogenic back pain and there is a critical need to develop non-addictive treatments that target both the underlying cause of disease as well as pain to improve human health and quality of life.