Advancing TMJ Therapeutics: Investigating Cartilage Progenitors and their Regulatory Niche
Speaker
Mildred Embree, Associate Professor of Dental Medicine, is an orthodontist-scientist who studies skeletal joint development and diseases, adult stem cells, and tissue regeneration. She focuses on osteoarthritis, which involves the breakdown of cartilage in joints.
Embree, who bridges basic and clinical science, seeks to develop minimally invasive treatments for osteoarthritis, including stem cell therapies, to help restore or regenerate the cartilage. Her work, which is supported by the National Institute of Health is paving the way for potential treatments for this disease.
Embree earned her DMD and PhD from the Medical University of South Carolina before joining the Columbia faculty in 2010.
Dr. Embree is a co-inventor of a patent on an osteoarthritis therapy related to this work (US patent 17/253993), which has been licensed to Wnt Scientific for commercialization.
Course Description
Temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis causes pain and permanent cartilage loss, and no pharmacological treatments are available. Here we exploit the TMJ as an elegant model for elucidating cartilage progenitors and their regulatory niche. These foundational findings are then leveraged to design and develop non-surgical TMJ osteoarthritis therapies.
Educational Objectives
1. Understanding the differences/similarities between the TMJ and knee joints.
2. What osteoarthritis is and why it is hard to treat.
3. What happens to mature cartilage cells during osteoarthritis.