A painful and disabling disease for 70% of those aged over 65, osteoarthritis, or rather its development, remains poorly understood. Bringing together all the stresses to which articulation joints are subjected to over the course of a lifetime is indispensable to an understanding of the mechanisms involved in this process. A challenge which Christelle Sanchez has met thanks to an in vitro compression model, which has earned her the Expanscience prize.

A prize awarded every year, since 1998, by a French pharmaceutical firm to a doctor in the Hexagon for their work in the field of rheumatology, the Expanscience Osteoarthritis Prize in Basic Research was for the first time bestowed on a young Belgian, last 2nd of December. ‘I am not a doctor, and I’m not French, but on the advice of Professor Henrotin, I registered as a candidate for this prize,’ joyfully explains Christelle Sanchez, a Doctor in Biomedical Sciences and FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Bone and Cartilage Research Unit at the ULg, which is run by Professor Henrotin. Since her final year dissertation she has thrown herself into research into the bone and cartilage mechanisms involved in the development of osteoarthritis, a disease which attacks the joints and affects 70% of people aged over 65. ‘Over the course of the ageing process, a loss of cartilage is observed, as well as a modification of the subchondral bone and the peripheral tissues, such as the synovial membrane, within the joints,’ specifies Christelle Sanchez. Mechanical wear and tear of the cartilage can also be linked to obesity or the intensive practice of sport.

‘The big problem is that the cartilage is a tissue which has no nerves. Pain thus only appears when there is no more cartilage and the articulation of members leads to the friction of bones rubbing against each other,’ continues Christelle Sanchez. If the first lesions of this affection are visible by radiography in a third of the population from the age of 45, above all in the knees and the hips, the diagnosis usually takes place later, once the pain appears. And thus too late to turn to drugs which enable the deterioration of the cartilage to be slowed down. ‘At that stage, we thus use anti-inflammatory and pain killing treatments. There remains much to be discovered concerning the causes and mechanisms of this disease. There is no miracle drug for now to prevent and to treat it,’ continues the researcher. Studying bone and cartilage tissues is thus the only path to take to lift the veil on what causes osteoarthritis in order to discover new therapeutic avenues.