
The Department of Defense (DoD) recently awarded Dr. Richard F. Loeser, Jr., Director of the Thurston Arthritis Research Center (TARC) and Joseph P. Archie, Jr. Eminent Professor of Medicine in the UNC School of Medicine, a $500,000 research grant towards his project, “A novel drug discovery approach for preventing post-traumatic osteoarthritis.” This Arthritis Research Program Focused Research Award from the DoD supports innovative, high-risk, high-reward research with the potential to significantly impact arthritis treatment or quality of life.
The overall goal of this project is to use a recently developed novel high throughput small molecule screening (HTS) technology combined with target prioritization tools to identify signaling pathways and therapeutic targets for prevention of osteoarthritis that occurs after joint injury.
Co-investigators on this project include Dr. Kenneth Pearce, Jr. in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Dr. Shawn Gomez, in the Department of Pharmacology and Drs. Lara Longobardi and Philip Coryell in UNC’s Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology and TARC.
Award Number: HT94252510556