What if, instead of addressing post-surgery pain with a pill or IV drip, a patient’s own cells could be triggered to prevent it?
This is one of the goals of a new field of medicine created by investigators with the Research Center at Shriners Hospitals for Children — St. Louis.
It’s called “mechanogenetics,” and its first target is to stop the damage caused by osteoarthritis, a painful joint condition. The work by researchers with the St. Louis Shriners Hospital and its partner, the Washington University School of Medicine, was published online Jan. 27 in the journal Science Advances.