So, I'm going to just give a brief overview about our own osteoarthritis research program at the Arthritis Foundation, and our vision statement for the program is to relieve burdens of OA patients through science, and this sort of word soup for our mission statement is basically to say that we're going to do that by encouraging and supporting clinical trials. And I'm going to just give a story of our model, and I think it's not a new model, but just to sort of break it down for you. We usually start looking at a program or an initiative through public informational science meetings. We've had decades of meetings, as you see here on this timeline, that we've done, hosted on our own. We've partnered with groups like the institutions like the FDA, and also, you know, attend meetings like these. And then we go, after we've seen some concepts that we want to dig in further, we go to assembling committees, and these are some examples over the past couple of years, and members of those committees include, you know, people like Austin Stone, Morgan Jones, Kurt Spindler, that I think are here this weekend. And then from there, the committees usually work on flushing out those concepts to develop funding announcements for us, and this grouping of funding announcements over the past few years probably represents about maybe $10 million, where the awards range from, you know, $50k to maybe $2.5 million, depending on the type of project. And from there, once we see, you know, something that, or we have seen something that we want to pursue much more further and deeply, we've developed, you know, sort of a network of institutions and investigators with shared capabilities to pursue, you know, a specific project, a project that we're, I'll tell you more about, called PICASO. And again, all those meetings to date have led us to be guided that our best, the Foundation's best chance at addressing OA is to look at knees, ACL reconstructions, PTOA through quantitative MRI. And we really wanted to focus on a multi-center clinical trial that required, you know, network activity. So we planned this network. This is just a drawing on a whiteboard in my office where we had a series of committees and centers that coordinate the capabilities of these, these, what we call CTUs or recruitment sites to work on hopefully many clinical trials, but starting with one that we are calling PICASO down here. And, you know, our committees guided us that some specific capabilities that we wanted to focus on for our sites are, you know, patient procedure volume, the ability to have MRI capabilities, advanced MRI capabilities, 3D motion capture, ultrasound guided injections, biospecimen storage, and a research pharmacy. And this is, you know, just some highlights from, you know, a pretty detailed funding announcement that we created, again, through the help of these committees that, you know, some of you here have participated in. These sites currently include, you know, some major institutions that you probably know well. And this grouping here is some of the AOSSM members that I, you know, quickly extracted from our proposal management system. But I know that there are more. I just couldn't get them all in. But I think you see many folks that you know here. And all of these folks are working together on a RCT known as PICASO. Again, we're bringing together all of these institutions with not only sports med specialists, but also, you know, scientists from all the disciplines that contribute to OA. And we're hoping to recruit around 500 patients. And we're really excited about this drug, metformin, that is low cost, off patent, and, you know, kind of perfect for a nonprofit to work on. You know, again, something that has this profile probably is one that pharma has a little less interest in. So we're, you know, we're glad to bring everyone together to work on this idea. And so that is like sort of the, you know, the end of the story, or not the end of the story, but a vision of the story of once we have gone through all that process that I returned to this timeline about. And when we've, you know, come together and found an idea that we really would like to support. And I've stopped here at 2021. But I wanted to give an update on where we've gone since then. In late 2021, we did a workshop on foot and ankle. And then later that led to an ankle arthritis working group. And that led to the announcement of a ankle grant that we released earlier this year for in partnership with AOFAS, which are kind of, I guess, your sister organization to AOSSM. As well as we're, you know, sort of starting the cycle again with a HIP meeting that we had in February up in New York, in partnership with HSS. So this blank area out into the future, just is saying that, you know, we're working on more stuff. We are here through the, you know, kind invitation of Lynette and Ben. And I think there's some positive things happening. And I don't know what that will, what the outcome will be. But, you know, if the work of the ankle and foot is a model, then I think there's a lot of hopeful promise in the future. And I asked Kurt Spindler, you know, what do I get up here and tell you guys to do? And he said, you know, the advice would be to get ready. And how I interpret that is, you know, to participate in meetings like this, but also, you know, hopefully our meetings, the review committees, and working groups. It might not be immediate benefit, but it does influence the program. I think participating in the review committees, especially kind of keeps you up to date on where, you know, what is the state of the art in terms of how people are making proposals. And then also build and join a team of folks in other disciplines. Of course, like sort of the full-time researchers in terms of the PhDs and research coordinators. Of course, your mentors. And, you know, get a good grants admin team. And then advocate for better logistics. You know, I think the research days are, of course, very precious to everybody here. But also, you know, I've seen that many of my research committees, or review committees, I apologize, don't have very many orthopedic surgeons or just a few that I really appreciate. But I wish there were more. And I think part of that could be, you know, the full-time researcher, the PhD, or the research coordinator maybe works a nine to five. And I know you guys have different hours. And I found the most productive time for surgeons with me has been early in the morning, like a 7 a.m., 8 a.m. meeting. And that's when I think you guys are winning the day. And I think you've been really active and engaged. And, you know, I'm playing around with, for example, like a 7 a.m. review meeting just to try to make sure that the voice of the surgeon is there. And so, I don't know, I think I could be helped by if you all advocated more to try something new out and try some times or some other logistics where you could be more available. So, that was just my quick presentation. And I'll flip back over to Volker. Great. Thank you so much. This is exactly what, yeah, you, yeah, if you would come right next to me, that's nice. This is exactly what we were hoping for. So, you're giving us an overview and kind of opening our mind a little bit what's out there. And I love the slide where half of it is still blank, which means to me that you're looking for more collaboration, which should be awesome for all of you sitting here because this could be you. So, how do we get on, for example, your radar to do a workshop together where an idea could eventually develop from? I think we've already, I think there's a lot of natural areas of collaboration. Many of our projects already have AOSS members and, you know, we didn't really think about it. When we've come to this meeting, I think we've seen a lot of overlap already. So, it might just be connecting a few dots at the leadership level. Very good. And, you know, the other point that I liked is think a little bit outside of the box thing. When we meet, we certainly meet either early, early in the morning when you're still asleep or late, late at night when everybody's not paying attention. So, I think showing the commitment, showing the commitment to your research will obviously be clear when you're flexible in, you know, coming up with times and dates. And, you know, I used to tell my fellows I used to go with a bike through the city and meet at somebody else's place because before you find your way to me, I just come to you. So, those things are really very helpful. How do we get on a review committee or expert panel within the Arthritis Foundation? Well, I think, you know, being available or maybe going a step further and asking, you know, just not saying no that you don't have the time but you really wish you could be there if things were changed. I think that helps just to, you know, it's like anything where you've asked three times and get a no, then you kind of assume that's a hint and kind of move along. I think that's helpful. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to do different things. Very good.

Arthritis Foundation

osteoarthritis research program

scientific research

clinical trials

PICASO project