Using Regenerative Therapy to Treat Canine Arthritis
By Kaitlyn Yeatman
“Approximately 80% of dogs over 8 years old have arthritis. We hope that this research will help to guide further innovations in treatment options for dogs with arthritis.” Dr. Michael Jaffe, an Associate Professor of Small Animal Surgery at the College of Veterinary Medicine, is working to relieve arthritis pain in dogs.
Jaffe began this journey 14 years ago, when he began treating his patients with regenerative therapy. This experience led him to begin research on the best way to treat arthritis in canines. “A few years ago, I worked with a company that uses amnion-based products to stimulate the release of stem cells and their components called extracellular vesicles, or exosomes,” Jaffe said. “I became intrigued by exosomes and wanted to further our knowledge of the presence of these vesicles in dogs with naturally occurring arthritis secondary to cranial cruciate ligament injury. Because flow cytometry has limitations in identifying these vesicles, we turned to Raman spectroscopy to see if we could better characterize the presence of these exosomes.”
Jaffe and his team are collecting stem cells from canines. “We are extracting these cells and using a variety of tests to identify the presence of their exosome packets. Exosomes contain genetic material that helps to decrease inflammation in the presence of arthritis and can hopefully help to repair damaged tissue,” Jaffe said.
He also has many collaborators assisting in his research, including Dr. Barb Kaplan in the Department of Comparative Biological Science who has trained two of his research students in Flow Cytometry; Dr. Gombojav Ariunbold in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, who helps facilitate Raman spectroscopy in their exosome study; and Dr. Trey Howell in Comparative Biological Sciences, who will be helping identify microRNA segments. He also has two research students.
Jaffe and his team are still early in their research but have made wonderful progress extracting exosome and identifying them thus far. In his next phase of his research, Jaffe will begin looking at micro RNA segments to attempt to gain a better understanding of exosomes.
“I am motivated by the knowledge that arthritis in dogs is an enormous clinical problem for me as a Small Animal Surgeon. Regenerative therapy has greatly helped many dogs, and our goal is to improve the treatment options we can offer these pets,” Jaffe said.
