So, first of all, I've really enjoyed this meeting, so thank you for the invitation to attend the meeting. Thank you, Ben and Lynette, for the opportunity to speak at this research workshop, and thanks to my colleague, Dr. Charles Washabaugh, who's so deeply committed to this community and from day one, about almost two and a half years ago, has been making sure that I understand this community and giving me opportunities to get to know you, so really enjoyed my time. So for those of you that aren't very familiar with NIAMS, we have three missions, basically. One is to support research into the treatment prevention of arthritis, musculoskeletal, and skin diseases, so clearly, sports medicine falls squarely within our key mission areas. We're also committed to training. We have a number of training awards and career development awards to make sure that they are scientists well-trained to carry out this research, and by the way, I've been impressed with the quality of the research I'm hearing and your commitment to evidence-based medicine, so thank you for taking research so seriously. But we also spend a fair amount of time on how to communicate our research progress and our research opportunities, and how do we reach out to the public, to members of Congress to make sure they understand the importance of what we're trying to do. So I wanted to spend a few minutes just to make sure that you understand how deeply committed NIAMS is to sports medicine and related areas, and I've learned since coming on board a couple of years ago about some of the important investments that NIAMS has made. These are probably familiar to you, at least some of them are familiar to you. I wanted to mention the osteoarthritis program, which has been underway for 10 years. It was a partnership primarily between NIAMS and the National Institute of Aging. That study enrolled almost 5,000 individuals that either had or were at risk for osteoarthritis as well as healthy controls, and obviously represents one of the largest datasets for osteoarthritis research. And although the participant visits have been completed, the participants are still being followed for joint replacement surgery outcomes. So it's still a useful resource, and the data and the images are available to the research community as well as the biospecimen. So I hope that you think about that as a resource for your osteoarthritis research. Now another investment that NIAMS has made, thanks to support from a program at the NIH called the Common Fund, NIAMS has been involved in a partnership to lead the MOTORPAC study, which stands for Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium. This is a really exciting program. It represents the largest investment to date of the NIH to try to understand the molecular changes that occur during and after exercise. As I mentioned, this is co-led by NIAMS and two other institutes. It's a six-year program, and the ultimate goal is to understand how physical activity improves health and prevents disease. And some of the initial very exciting publications from this effort are going to be coming out in the next few months. So keep that in mind also as a research resource. I've been delighted to finally hear more about this MOON study that I've been hearing about for quite a while. So really impressive the way in which your community got together to create this network. And for those of you that might be new to the field, this was established back in 2001 to look at outcomes of ACL reconstruction. Eighteen sports medicine physicians across seven sites, I understand, perform this, comprise this network. Then there was an expansion to the Shoulder Group in 2004 with 16 physicians in eight sites. Very, very impressive commitment. And then more recently in 2006, the MARS study. And I just learned a few minutes ago about the theme for some of the orthopedics programs, Venus and Pluto and Meteor. So very clever. Anyway, so really, really impressed with some of the work that you've done. And I think it's a testament to our commitment to your community. But we haven't stopped there. So I wanted to mention more generally some of the research that we're supporting now and some of the new efforts that you might not be aware of. And some of these programs that we're currently funding, many driven by investigator-initiated proposals focused on repair and rehabilitation. I've been hearing a lot about that at this meeting, covering a number of joints, rotator cuff, knee, ankle, elbow, trauma related to sports injuries. Really important problem. We support research across the whole spectrum of basic, translational, and clinical. And also are interested in the interplay among muscles, bones, and connective tissue. Something that has been challenging to study, but critically important to understand what's going on in joints. Also wanted to highlight our commitment to rehabilitation research, and including this notion of precision rehabilitation, which I've been hearing in some of the presentations at this meeting. And also technologies to monitor progress remotely, which will be such a great contribution to understanding in this area. We also fund research to prevent injuries, research related to health disparities in sports medicine. I was happy to hear some presentations along those lines. And of course, research related to development of new materials in reconstruction surgeries. It's been fascinating to learn about Bayer and other things. So really, really an interesting area. Now I also wanted to make sure you're aware of that. Other than, in addition to, I should say, traditional research project grants, there are many other funding mechanisms that might be appropriate for supporting your research, including the Small Business Innovation Research Program, cooperative agreements that are close relationships between the NIH and institutions, and also career development awards. And I think my colleague Chuck is going to be saying more about that. Lastly, I wanted to mention a couple of things related to joint pain, because I know joint pain is a driving motivator factor for many of you as clinicians and as researchers. And you may not be aware of this new program that NIAMS is playing a very important role on. It's mentioned here at the bottom of this slide. We've been calling it the REJOIN Program, Restoring Joint Health and Function to Reduce Pain. This program is being funded by the HEAL Initiative. That's the Helping to End Addiction Long-Term Initiative that Congress has been generously supporting for the last few years. And NIAMS has done an excellent job leveraging these resources for some programs in this area. And REJOIN seeks to understand the complex innervation to all of the tissues that comprise the joint, starting initially with the knee joint and the temporomandibular joint. So you'll be hearing a lot more about this program in the coming years. So I wanted to bring that to your attention. And lastly, on the topic of pain, NIAMS, for the last couple of years, has published what are called NOSIs, or Notices of Special Interest, to make sure that the community is aware that we're particularly interested in supporting research, any type of research, related to pain. This year, we received some additional funding from Congress because of Congress's interest in concern about pain. We have two types of supplemental funding, one for individuals that have a grant that might be appropriate for expansion to a pain-related focus, and also for our T32 training program. So I wanted to make sure you're aware of our specific interest in pain because it's so relevant to your community. So probably many of you have seen this picture before, but if not, the NIH actually is comprised of 27 different institutes and centers. Now we've positioned NIAMS right at the top of this figure. This is a little bit NIAMS-centric, but all of those institutes and centers in FUSIA are funding some sort of sports medicine-related research. So when you're thinking about the NIH, don't just limit your thinking to NIAMS. Consider these other institutes. And I wanted to mention a couple of points that I've learned from Chuck. There are two other institutes that have very specific interests related to sports medicine, NINDS for concussion, and NHLBI, the Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, for sickle cell disease. So I wanted to make sure you're aware about that, their specific interests. And lastly, a really exciting development. I'm not sure how many of you are aware that there is a new agency related to health that's in its second year. President Biden has been wanting to do this for a really long time. And this new agency is called ARPA-H, Advanced Projects Agency for Health. It's modeled after DARPA. And the idea is to support high-risk, high-reward research in a very different and complementary way from the traditional NIH approach. And we were thrilled to hear that the very first program that's being launched under ARPA-H is directly related to osteoarthritis and falls right within our interests and is highly relevant to your community as well. So this is going to be a very exciting program, a very rapid-paced, high-risk, high-reward expectations of high failure. But wanted to make sure that you're aware of this funding opportunity for your out-of-the-box novel, highly innovative, and potentially transformative ideas. And they're specifically for NITRO interested in injectable bone regeneration, injectable cartilage regeneration, and replacement joints built from human cells. So stay tuned for more on that front. And on that note, thank you very much. And I'll take my seat right next to Jason and happy to take a couple questions now and maybe some at the end of the presentations. Thank you. Very nice. I'm sure there will be many, many questions for you on how we can get involved more. I find it very, very interesting to see how many different institutes there are and wonder to myself when we think about NIH and NIAMS, you know, how do we get directed into maybe sometimes more or avoid going into a less appropriate institute? Will you, is there a mechanism by which we can ask for help, which way to go? Absolutely. And I think Chuck's going to be talking about this. But of course, NIAMS is the best institute. But we do appreciate the support and resources that other institutes have. And the program officers like Chuck, I never realized this when I was an investigator, they are actually, they are there to serve you. You should reach out to any program officer whose name you stumble upon and tell them, this is what I'm interested in. Is this a good fit for NIAMS? Is there a better fit at another institute? Are there special funds available right now that would be more appropriate? And there are also though some resources that I think Chuck is going to walk you through where you can go and put in your specific aims or your abstract or keywords and get some other ideas about good alignment, so. And you realize when you talk to orthopedic surgeons and you use the word fast, we're like all with you, right? When you mentioned this NITRO program, like I'm getting very excited. Anything that can be, you know, sped up and all this, this is very, very exciting. So I'd love to maybe in the discussion later talk a little bit more about that program and how to maybe, you know, yeah. I'm happy to say more about that if we have time. Yeah, for sure. Yes. Great. Any other questions?

National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases

sports medicine research

osteoarthritis program

Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MOTORPAC) study

MOON study