RAPID
CITY, SD (Feb. 2, 2021) — A South Dakota Mines research team has developed technology –
and established a subsequent startup company – that could be a key to finding a
cure for osteoarthritis.
Scott Wood, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the NanoScience
and NanoEngineering Program,
and Ph.D. student Ram Saraswat lead the research and development of the
nanoscience technology now utilized by their startup, CellField Technologies.
“We’re excited about the potential future of the technology and the company,”
Wood says. “We hope it will be a gamechanger in osteoarthritis research.”
Osteoarthritis,
sometimes called degenerative joint disease, is the most common form of
arthritis. Most often it occurs in the hands, hips and knees. Osteoarthritis
develops when the cartilage within a joint begins to break down, causing pain,
stiffness and swelling. More than 32.5 million adults in the United States
suffer from osteoarthritis, and current treatments offer little more than temporary
pain control, Wood says.
Wood
says that for hundreds of years, doctors have considered osteoarthritis a “wear
and tear disease, but we know now that it’s more complicated … It’s actually an imbalance of the
behavior of the cells in the joint.”
Wood
says CellField’s t...