Rhode Island Hospital has won an $11.1-million grant to study the prevention and treatment of joint diseases, such as arthritis.

Spread over five years, the money will allow the hospital, along with the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, to establish a center for skeletal health and repair.

Rhode Island Hospital was among three institutions that announced similar awards yesterday from the National Center for Research Resources, a part of the National Institutes of Health. The three grants come from the Institutional Development Awards program, which supports multidisciplinary research in states that historically have not received high levels of NIH funding. The other grants went to the University of Kansas Medical Center, for work on cell development, and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, to study diabetes.

For Rhode Island Hospital, the grant is among the largest it has ever received. Qian Chen, principal investigator, said it will pay for about 20 positions — recruiting new researchers and keeping those who might have lost funding and left. A key aspect of the grant involves mentoring the next generation of researchers, including teaching them how to win more grants. The grant will also pay for the expansion and renovation of lab space.

The research team will include experts in orthopedics, emergency medicine, pediatrics, medicine and bioengineering. They will study childhood bone development and joint diseases in adults, particularly osteoarthritis.

A condition in which the cartilage that cushions joints crumbles away, osteoarthritis afflicts an estimated 21 million Americans and is a leading cause of disability. As people age and the prevalence of obesity increases, the problem is only expected to get worse. Once the cartilage is gone, the only treatment available today is to install artificial joints, which typically wear out in 10 or 15 years.

The researchers will look for ways to prevent the joint damage as well as better ways to repair it. For example, Chen said, they are examining — in laboratory dishes and in mice — how exercise strengthens cartilage, including identifying the genes that control the process of building new cartilage. The researchers are developing agents that can inhibit the enzyme that breaks down cartilage. They are also working on growing natural cartilage in the laboratory, which could then be used to permanently replace lost cartilage in the joint.

Rhode Island’s grant is known as a COBRE grant, for Center of Biomedical Research Excellence. This is the sixth COBRE grant to Rhode Island-based institutions and the second for Rhode Island Hospital. (The other involved cancer care.)

Rhode Island Hospital assembled numerous dignitaries to celebrate the award yesterday, including Governor Carcieri, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, U.S. Rep. James Langevin, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, and Louise Ramm, deputy director of the National Center for Research Resources.

ffreyer@projo.com