Kelsey H. Collins, PhD, Wins NEXT Award for Translational Research on Relationship between Fat and Osteoarthritis Development and Pain

The award recognizes Dr. Collins' work uncovering the role of fat tissue as a key contributor to osteoarthritis and pain.

Published on Mar. 4, 2026

Got story updates? Submit your updates here. ›

Kelsey H. Collins, PhD, has been awarded the 2026 New Emerging eXperts in Translational Science (NEXT) Award for her research on the relationship between fat tissue and the development of osteoarthritis (OA) and associated pain. Dr. Collins' translational studies demonstrate that OA may be a systemic condition influenced by metabolic and immune factors, with fat being a key contributor to OA development and pain.

Why it matters

OA affects over 32.5 million Americans, typically those over 50 or with prior joint injuries, and the economic burden has doubled in the last decade to over $136 billion per year. Dr. Collins' work challenges the traditional view of OA as a "wear and tear" condition, instead proposing that it may have systemic origins involving fat tissue outside the joint. This could lead to new therapeutic approaches targeting the underlying metabolic and immune factors driving OA.

The details

Dr. Collins' research has focused on uncovering how adipose (fat) tissue and fat-derived factors influence the development of OA and associated pain. Her studies in rat and mouse models have shown that diet-induced obesity and the presence of fat tissue, not just body mass, are key drivers of joint damage and OA. She has also found that mice lacking fat tissue are protected from cartilage damage and pain when challenged with an OA-inducing injury. These findings suggest that adipose tissue and its secreted factors mediate joint degeneration, identifying new potential therapeutic targets.

  • Dr. Collins began her PhD studies at the University of Calgary in Canada under Walter Herzog, PhD, and continued her postdoctoral work with Farshid Guilak, PhD.
  • Dr. Collins received the NEXT Award during the AAOS 2026 Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

The players

Kelsey H. Collins, PhD

The recipient of the 2026 NEXT Award for her translational research on the role of fat tissue in osteoarthritis development and pain.

Walter Herzog, PhD

Dr. Collins' supervisor during her PhD studies at the University of Calgary.

Farshid Guilak, PhD

Dr. Collins' postdoctoral mentor.

Gillian Hawker, MD, FRCPC

A key opinion leader in the field of osteoarthritis who shared insights that inspired Dr. Collins' research.

Tim Griffin, PhD

A postdoc at the time who published cutting-edge work demonstrating that obese mice lacking certain signals were protected from osteoarthritis.

Got photos? Submit your photos here. ›

What they’re saying

“From a very young age, my mother struggled with an aggressive form of arthritis. At one point, she was told that she'd be wheelchair-bound, but biologic drugs changed her life. I saw how the functional limitation and pain are what really matter to patients, and pain is something they must live and navigate with until they get a total joint replacement, or new solutions are created.”

— Kelsey H. Collins, PhD

“In medicine, practitioners manage diseases with the best solution available at the time. When people have knee pain, the assumption is that it driven by something isolated to the knee, and it is intuitive in most practices to think about the patient's age. However, when we and others started asking questions about whether sex differences, obesity status, and aging can drive differential trajectories or phenotypes of disease, we saw patterns suggesting that perhaps OA is not an endpoint of all these things that are systemic – and instead, maybe it can drive these multi-morbidities and even drive aging.”

— Kelsey H. Collins, PhD

“Dr. Guilak taught me that the best way to prove yourself right is to try to prove yourself wrong. We have all these technologies now that enable unbiased discovery, allowing us to step back and determine if the patterns we find support our findings on their own. My mentors have not been afraid of new tricks, and I've been trained in environments where people aren't threatened by a new and better understanding of how OA develops.”

— Kelsey H. Collins, PhD

What’s next

For future work, Dr. Collins plans to break down the interface between fat signaling, obesity and aging to find more novel molecular drivers of pain, and validate those identified in her mouse studies. Once the molecular, cellular or nervous system factors responsible for the joint crosstalk driving OA have been determined, novel cell-based regenerative medicine approaches and new biologic drugs can be developed.

The takeaway

Dr. Collins' research challenges the traditional view of osteoarthritis as a localized "wear and tear" condition, instead proposing that it may be a systemic disease driven by metabolic and immune factors related to fat tissue. This shift in understanding could lead to new therapeutic approaches targeting the underlying causes of OA rather than just managing the symptoms.