Science@BCRT | Ryan Jones

About the Speaker

Ryan Jones is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Cardiff University. He completed his PhD (2020–2024) on the role of axon guidance signalling in osteoarthritis pathology, following an Integrated Master’s degree in Biomedical Science. His research focuses on modelling bone-derived pain in osteoarthritis using iPSC-derived sensory neurons integrated into mechanically loaded osteocyte models. By combining patient-derived synovial fluid with advanced techniques such as real-time electrophysiology, automated patch clamp, and confocal microscopy, he has developed in vitro models capable of predicting patient-reported pain. His work has been recognised with several national and international awards, including honours from the British Orthopaedic Research Society and OARSI. He has also secured competitive personal research funding to support his translational research in osteoarthritis-related pain mechanisms.

Talk

“Predicitve Modelling of Osteoarthritis Patient Pain In Vitro”

Musculoskeletal conditions, alongside mental health, are now the two leading causes of working-age ill health in the UK, contributing to 2.5 million people being out of work. MSK conditions are no longer just a clinical priority-but the source of a national economic and productivity crisis. Osteoarthritis (OA) is the greatest cause of musculoskeletal pain and disability globally, nearly 600 million people had OA globally in 2020 and numbers affected with knee OA are estimated to grow by 75% by 2050. The existing approaches to alleviate OA pain fail to deliver adequate relief 2 and frequently lead to notable side effects. An estimated 34% of OA patients also still experience chronic pain after joint arthroplasty. There are no effective treatments to reduce the burden of pain in these patients. In OA physiologically silent nociceptors become activated, increasing their responses to noxious, or even innocuous, stimuli. Many OA patients also develop neuropathic features linked to changes in channel activity and gene expression at the nerve cell body within the dorsal root ganglia causing chronic debilitating pain. However, the molecular mechanisms governing nociception and neuropathic development of OA pain remain elusive. Traditionally animal models have been used for the investigation of musculoskeletal pain. However, animal models have phenotypically different peripheral nerve populations to humans. OA risk factor TRPV1, an ion channel that is expressed in 75% of human DRG cells, is expressed in under a third of mouse DRG cells. There is a need for more accurate models of human OA pain. He will present his most recent work in developing an in vitro human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived nociceptor model for investigating OA pain and test whether it can predict patient pain experience.

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