The overall aim of my laboratory efforts continues to be gaining a better understanding of the fundamental principles of bone healing and to use these principles in the development of methods to improve bone healing. Current projects include the use of a multigene assay to quantitatively describe the genetic cascade of growth factors and cytokines during the process of fracture healing. This work will be done in collaboration with Paul Cannon, Ph.D. at Roche Bioscience since he has access to gene chip technology. In addition to this work in the rat fracture model, we will also be collaborating with the scientists at Roche Bioscience in studying the gene expression in a number of human musculoskeletal tissues harvested during total joint arthroplasty procedures.