New Treatment Strategies for Cartilage Degenerative Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Healthy cartilage is necessary for day-to-day activity. However, often, with aging, cartilage health declines and cartilage degeneration occurs. Cartilage degenerative diseases, such as osteoarthritis, are on the rise and new treatments are desperately needed. Common approved treatments focus mainly on pain relief; however, they fail to regenerate the diseased tissue.

Cartilage is comprised of chondrocytes that secrete extracellular matrix and organize the matrix. During tears of the cartilage and during disease these cells cannot keep up with the demand and new strategies for cartilage repair need to be developed. New advances in stem cell therapy, new therapeutics that can activate chondrocytes, as well as new strategies for knee replacement surgeries are slowly emerging. This progress is changing the outlook for Cartilage Degenerative Diseases. However, strategies need to be transferred from the benchside to the bedside and this is often time consuming.

In addition, basic research on cartilage is progressing providing new insights into the mechanism of cartilage formation. Without this research, the development of new therapeutics is almost impossible. However, defining new mechanisms on the molecular basis is tedious and complex. Interdisciplinary research teams aid by utilizing the basic research findings to design new more progressive therapeutics that can be validated in models for cartilage degenerative diseases.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to publish original research work related to the basic research, new therapeutics, stem cells and new treatments for Cartilage Degenerative Diseases. The papers should contribute significantly to further scientific knowledge in the above-mentioned scientific fields.

Asso. Prof. Dr. Anja Nohe
Guest Editor

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