Priority 7: Developing Enabling Research Infrastructure Including Technologies and Model Systems

Image

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 systemic autoimmune, and skin diseases as well as orthopaedics research. Consistent with 2023 recommendations of the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director and related NIH efforts, strategies to develop in vitro, in vivo, and in silico models are of particular relevance for accelerating research. The goal would be to develop strategies that are significantly more predictive than current systems available for investigating physiology, developmental biology, disease pathogenesis, and drug development.

Examples of efforts under this topic include the following.

Strategy 7.1: Improving Molecular and Cellular Studies

Image

• Developing and validating methods to evaluate functional consequences (i.e., pathogenicity) of all variants in genes known to cause diseases within NIAMS’ mission areas to reduce the number of variants of uncertain significance and improve diagnosis and prognosis for those diseases.
• Including tissues of interest to NIAMS in new or existing omics resources. These efforts could include projects from other federal or private-sector entities or could be a standalone resource that includes standardized clinical phenotyping and genotyping data from patients who have arthritis or who have musculoskeletal or skin diseases.
• Developing and validating rigorous methods for collecting, reporting, and curating data from single-cell and omics studies.

Strategy 7.2: Improving Model Systems

• Developing in vitro systems that model complex physical and biological microenvironments for the design and testing of potential therapeutics and the exploration of disease mechanisms. This could include:
  • Creating models of NIAMS-relevant tissues that include an immune component.
  • Developing in vitro models that mimic the integrative interactions of bone and musculoskeletal systems with multiple other organs under normal conditions or diseased states.
  • Modeling musculoskeletal and skin microenvironments.
  • Developing physiologically relevant in vitro models of pain and itch.
  • Designing methods to control for changes to the microbiome that may influence study outcomes.
• Developing models that better mimic human diseases.
• Developing models that replicate interactions between behaviors, systemic health, pain phenotypes, and diseases of interest to NIAMS. Such models could be useful for the creation of unbiased datasets and approaches for training ML/AI techniques.
• Developing models that are disease agnostic or broadly applicable across individual diseases.

Strategy 7.3: Improving Patient Care

• Developing and validating diagnostic tools that can be used to identify the need for interventions prior to or at the onset of a disease or condition.
• Developing and validating drug delivery technologies such as nanomedicine that reduce the patient-reported burden of treatment and improve adherence.
• Enhancing the design of cell therapies for arthritis, musculoskeletal or skin diseases.
• Developing and validating imaging biomarkers for prognostic and diagnostic tools that can be implemented in clinical research and clinical care.