A team of delegates from the Cell Biology Lab of School of Biotechnology, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, participated in the 3rd International Conference on Osteoarthritis, organized by the Indian Rheumatology Association, Karnataka Chapter, from August 3-4, 2019, at Bengaluru. The team comprising of Ms. Meera Venugopal, Dr. Jyotsna Nambiar and Dr. Bipin Nair presented a poster on the topic “Regulation of Osteoclastogenesis by Anacardic Acid: Role in Osteoarthritis”, which is a part of the thesis work of the Ph.D. student, Ms. Meera Venugopal and received the best poster award.
Ms. Venugopal’s work involves understanding the imbalance between loss of cartilage and ability to repair cartilage matrix in disease conditions like osteoarthritis and the role of natural product modulators in reversing this condition.
Dr. Bipin Nair, Dean, Amrita School of Biotechnology (ASBT) gave a talk on “Is There a Treasure in Ayurveda Waiting to be Discovered?”. The talk was focused on the anti-inflammatory properties of various natural products which resulted in a beneficial effect on osteoarthritis of the knee. Several ayurvedic formulations like bhallataka (Semecarpus anacardium), that contains anacardic acid as a major component, has been used for the treatment of both osteoarthritis as well as rheumatoid arthritis. The role of such natural products on increasing the bone matrix deposition and decreasing bone resorption eventually helping in modulating the bone metabolism in osteoarthritic patients was highlighted in the talk.
