Assessment of Crosslink Density in Collagen Models and Ultrafast Laser Crosslinking of Corneal and Cartilage Tissues as Novel Treatment Modalities

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive and complex joint disease that results from breakdown of articular cartilage and remodeling of underlying bone, which affects millions of Americans. While the expected lifetime of the load-bearing cartilage tissue should coincide with the lifespan of an individual, it has a limited ability to self-repair and the damage to the tissue can accumulate severely. One of the major challenges in OA treatment is its long asymptomatic period. Symptoms usually become noticeable when the disease is reaching advanced stages, and currently there is no effective intervention for early stages of OA. This may be due to lack of a reliable diagnostic method for detecting early OA. While OA is a degenerative joint disorder that may lead to gross cartilage loss and morphological damage to other joint tissues, a lot of subclinical, subtle biochemical changes occur in the early stages of OA progression. The degradation of collagen type II matrix in articular cartilage extracellular matrix (ECM) network may corelate with the progression of cartilage OA. During onset of OA, with the loss of collagen crosslinks, the collagen matrix in cartilage ECM becomes more disorgani