NIAMS remains committed to supporting interdisciplinary research, team science, and partnerships. Collaboration is a key priority in the NIAMS mission, and the institute supports several partnership programs to accelerate research, raise awareness of research activities, and provide health care services to clinical studies for people affected by diseases covered by the NIAMS mission. These partnerships extend to include other NIH components and federal agencies, the research community, professional and voluntary organizations, community organizations, and patients. The nature of research in the NIAMS mission is highly interdisciplinary and these partnerships ensure that a wide range of perspectives and areas are represented.
Examples of efforts under this topic include the following.
Strategy 8.1: Forging New Teams and Partnerships
- Encouraging progress toward the institute’s goals and the research priorities as noted in the plan by fostering collaboration among scientists who study bones, joints, muscle, skin, and autoimmunity and those who study complementary basic, clinical, or social science, or public health disciplines. Such complementary specialties can include:
- Nonbiological disciplines such as data science, chemistry, mathematics, physics, or engineering.
- Other biomedical fields such as neuroscience, microbiology, or stem cell biology.
- Clinical fields that focus on co-occurring conditions.
- Specialists such as athletic trainers who can support people as they incorporate physical activity into their lives.
- Behavioral and social science and public health focus areas that can explain and help to reduce health disparities and implement proven interventions at a community or systems level.
- Encouraging partnerships between investigators studying adults and children with the same condition.
- Fostering partnerships between researchers and patient advocacy groups.
Strategy 8.2: Leveraging Existing Resources
- Developing cross-institutional, cross-agency, and global efforts to leverage strengths and resources within and outside of NIAMS such as is being done through the NIAMS Core Centers for Clinical Research (P30), NIAMS Resource-based Centers (P30), AMP Autoimmune and Immune-Mediated Diseases (AMP AIM), and NIH’s Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) programs. Such partnerships could facilitate access to data, biospecimens, and technological resources to advance the NIAMS mission.
- Expanding the topics being studied through public-private partnerships such as AMP or through the NIH Common Fund to include additional rheumatic, musculoskeletal, and skin diseases.
The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI): A Public-Private Partnership to Advance Biomarker Discovery
There are currently no disease-modifying OA drugs that have been approved by regulatory agencies. One barrier to the development of drugs that interrupt the underlying disease processes is a lack of objective and measurable standards for disease progression for new drugs. To overcome this problem, NIAMS, along with NIA, led the development of the OAI, a nationwide, multicenter observational study to follow people who either have or are at risk for developing knee OA.
The overall aim of the OAI was to develop a public-domain research resource to facilitate the scientific evaluation of biomarkers for OA as potential surrogate endpoints for disease onset and progression. This study continues to advance the understanding of how risk factors are linked to the development and worsening of knee OA as investigators continue to analyze data from almost 4,800 participants.
The OAI is a public-private partnership that began in July 2001. All participant visits through eight years have been completed, which makes the OAI one of the largest and perhaps most important datasets in the history of OA research. The dataset contains clinical, genomic, patient-reported, and functional data, biological specimens, and x-ray and MRI images. The data are available free of charge at https://nda.nih.gov/oai. In addition, genomic data from the ancillary Genetic Components of Knee OA (GeCKO) study, a genome-wide association study on the entire OAI cohort, is available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s database of Genotypes and Phenotypes website.
Data and images from all visits have been publicly released through the OAI Online website since 2006. Additional data from image and biospecimen analyses are posted quarterly on the OAI website. Investigators can use this unique repository to track the natural history of knee OA across the complete spectrum of disease. Such findings may lead to improved strategies for the prevention of disease and the identification of novel treatment targets, which could, in turn, result in the prevention of later-life disability in individuals with knee OA.
Other Capacity-Building Priorities
Research Infrastructure
Biomedical innovations hold synergistic potential capable of being leveraged throughout the research landscape. NIAMS supports the development and validation of technologies, models, and methods that can enable multiple advances to be made in the areas of bone, joint, muscle, rheumatic and systemic autoimmune, and skin diseases and orthopaedics research.
Training and Workforce
Attracting and maintaining a robust scientific workforce is critical to advancing understanding of bone, joint, muscle, rheumatic, systemic autoimmune, and skin diseases as well as orthopaedics. NIAMS is committed to strengthening support for early and mid-career investigators to ensure a robust mentorship structure and a continuous pathway for researchers dedicated to the diseases and disorders within the NIAMS mission.