Professor Andrew McCaskie
Regenerative therapies for bone and cartilage repair
Email: awm41@cam.ac.uk
Laboratory: Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
Departmental Affiliation: Surgery, Division of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Biography
Andrew McCaskie moved to Cambridge in 2013 to take up the Professorship in Orthopaedic Surgery, becoming Head of the Department of Surgery in 2017. He led the bid to establish the Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre and became the Director. The Centre brings together many institutions across the UK (University of Cambridge, Newcastle University, the University of Aberdeen, Keele University/the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Oswestry, the University of York and the University of Birmingham) bringing together clinicians, engineers and biologists from research and clinical groups to develop regenerative therapies for people with Osteoarthritis. Funded by a core grant of £2.4 million in the first five years and renewed in 2016 (£1.9M) the centre was subsequently renamed; Versus Arthritis; Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Therapies Centre. Professor McCaskie led the Smart Step programme (£1.1M) as part of Stage II UK Regenerative Medicine Platform and is a co-investigator in the recently established UK Regenerative Medicine Platform Hub; Engineered cell environment (£5.1M). His clinical interest is lower limb, particularly hip disease in young patients and he aims to link research to the clinic, for example clinical trials (cell therapy trial for knee arthritis - ADIPOA2 EU €5.9M). He is one of the three editors of Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery 27th Edition and is the Director of the Academic Foundation Programme in Cambridge, establishing the transplant and regeneration theme. He Chairs the Cell Therapy Oversight Committee and represents Addenbrooke’s in the Midlands and Wales Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre.
Funding
Versus Arthritis (formerly Arthritis Research UK), MRC & UK Regenerative Medicine Platform, Evelyn Trust, Alborada Foundation, European Commission Horizon 2020
External Links
https://www.ukrmp.org.uk/hubs/engineered-cell-environment/
https://www.versusarthritis.org/research/our-current-research/our-research-centres/
https://surgery.medschl.cam.ac.uk/
Immunofluorescence image of a section through a joint illustrating the cellularity (nuclei stained blue) of the articular cartilage and meniscus. The boundaries of the two apposing articular cartilage surfaces and the meniscal tissue are marked with yellow lines.
Research
Professor McCaskie’s aim is to develop innovative therapies for musculoskeletal disease, particularly in Osteoarthritis (OA) which affects around 8 million people in the UK alone. He is currently developing translational pathways for regenerative therapy in this area, linking laboratory research with clinical treatment, including clinical trials.
Laboratory research programmes focus on the opportunity to use adult stem/ stromal populations, along with other relevant cell types (inflammatory, immune, and chondrocyte) either alone or with tissue engineering approaches to target early disease. Our research also considers the mechanisms of joint destruction relevant to repair. Translational and clinical programmes seek to use stratified and experimental medicine approaches, particularly focused on imaging and tissue analysis during cartilage repair surgery. The latter includes cell characterisation by phenotype and single cell transcriptomics to understand the role played by cell therapies in the repair of joint tissues.
In this way we seek to develop new cell and molecular approaches for cartilage repair, to offer new treatments to patients with musculoskeletal conditions like osteoarthritis.
Key Publications
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Gadomski S, Fielding C, ... McCaskie AW, Robey PG, Méndez-Ferrer S. A cholinergic neuroskeletal interface promotes bone formation during postnatal growth and exercise. Cell Stem Cell. 2022 Apr 7;29(4):528-544.e9. doi: 10.1016/j. stem.2022.02.008. Epub 2022 Mar 10.
- Steinberg, J., Southam, L., Fontalis, A., Clark, M. J., Jayasuriya, R. L., Swift, D., . . . Zeggini, E. (2021). Linking chondrocyte and synovial transcriptional profile to clinical phenotype in osteoarthritis.. Ann Rheum Dis. doi:10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-219760
- Steinberg, J., Southam, L., Roumeliotis, T. I., Clark, M. J., Jayasuriya, R. L., Swift, D., . . . Zeggini, E. (2021). A molecular quantitative trait locus map for osteoarthritis.. Nat Commun, 12(1), 1309. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-21593-7
- MacKay, J. W., Nezhad, F. S., Rifai, T., Kaggie, J. D., Naish, J. H., Roberts, C., . . . Parker, G. J. M. (2021). Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI of synovitis in knee osteoarthritis: repeatability, discrimination and sensitivity to change in a prospective experimental study.. Eur Radiol. doi:10.1007/s00330-021-07698-z
- Eldridge, S. E., Barawi, A., Wang, H., Roelofs, A. J., Kaneva, M., Guan, Z., . . . Dell'Accio, F. (2020). Agrin induces long-term osteochondral regeneration by supporting repair morphogenesis.. Sci Transl Med, 12(559). doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aax9086
- MacKay, J. W., Kaggie, J. D., Treece, G. M., McDonnell, S. M., Khan, W., Roberts, A. R., . . . Gilbert, F. J. (2020). Three-Dimensional Surface-Based Analysis of Cartilage MRI Data in Knee Osteoarthritis: Validation and Initial Clinical Application.. J Magn Reson Imaging, 52(4), 1139-1151. doi:10.1002/jmri.27193
- Palmer, A.J.R., Ayyar Gupta, V., Fernquest, S., Rombach, I., Dutton, S.J., Mansour, R., Wood, S., Khanduja, V., Pollard, T.C.B., McCaskie, A.W., Barker, K.L., Andrade, T.J.M.D., Carr, A.J., Beard, D.J., Glyn-Jones, S., FAIT Study Group, 2019. Arthroscopic hip surgery compared with physiotherapy and activity modification for the treatment of symptomatic femoroacetabular impingement: multicentre randomised controlled trial. BMJ 364, l185. PMCID: PMC6365841
- Zengini E, Hatzikotoulas K, Tachmazidou I, ... McCaskie A, ... Zeggini E. Genome-wide analyses using UK Biobank data provide insights into the genetic architecture of osteoarthritis. Nature Genetics. 2018 Apr;50(4):549-558.
- Steinberg J, Brooks R, Southam L, ... McCaskie AW, Zeggini E. Widespread Epigenomic, Transcriptomic and Proteomic Differences Between Hip Osteophytic and Articular Chondrocytes in Osteoarthritis. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2018 Aug 1;57(8):1481-1489.
- Evangelou E, Kerkhof HJ. ... McCaskie A,... Valdes AM. A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies novel variants associated with osteoarthritis of the hip. Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. 2014 Dec;73(12):2130-6.
- Elliott KS, Chapman K, Day-Williams A,... McCaskie A,... The arcOGEN consortium,... Zeggini E. Evaluation of the genetic overlap between osteoarthritis with body mass index and height using genome-wide association scan data. Ann Rheum Dis. 2013, 72(6), 935-941. PMCID: PMC3664369
- Zeggini E, Panoutsopoulou K, Southam L,... McCaskie A, Valdes AM, Spector TD, Loughlin J. Identification of new susceptibility loci for osteoarthritis (arcOGEN): a genome-wide association study. Lancet 2012, 380(9844), 815-823. PMCID:PMC3443899