Cartilage diseases Krishnan, Yamini; Grodzinsky, Alan J.
Matrix biology,
10/2018, Letnik:
71-72
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Hyaline cartilages, fibrocartilages and elastic cartilages play multiple roles in the human body including bearing loads in articular joints and intervertebral discs, providing joint lubrication, ...forming the external ears and nose, supporting the trachea, and forming the long bones during development and growth. The structure and organization of cartilage's extracellular matrix (ECM) are the primary determinants of normal function. Most diseases involving cartilage lead to dramatic changes in the ECM which can govern disease progression (e.g., in osteoarthritis), cause the main symptoms of the disease (e.g., dwarfism caused by genetically inherited mutations) or occur as collateral damage in pathological processes occurring in other nearby tissues (e.g., osteochondritis dissecans and inflammatory arthropathies). Challenges associated with cartilage diseases include poor understanding of the etiology and pathogenesis, delayed diagnoses due to the aneural nature of the tissue and drug delivery challenges due to the avascular nature of adult cartilages. This narrative review provides an overview of the clinical and pathological features as well as current treatment options available for various cartilage diseases. Late breaking advances are also described in the quest for development and delivery of effective disease modifying drugs for cartilage diseases including osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
•Cartilage diseases range from extremely rare conditions (three cases worldwide) to the most common, Osteoarthritis (OA)•Dramatic extracellular matrix changes in these diseases impair normal tissue function and lead to disease progression•There are no disease modifying drugs available for osteoarthritis•Potential disease modifying OA drugs (DMOADs) are being developed based on new advances in understanding OA pathogenesis•Cartilage-targeted drug delivery can potentially transform unsuccessful DMOAD candidates into effective therapeutics
Current measurements of the biomechanical properties of cells require physical contact with cells or lack subcellular resolution. Here we developed a label-free microscopy technique based on ...Brillouin light scattering that is capable of measuring an intracellular longitudinal modulus with optical resolution. The 3D Brillouin maps we obtained of cells in 2D and 3D microenvironments revealed mechanical changes due to cytoskeletal modulation and cell-volume regulation.
Current intra-articular drug delivery methods do not guarantee sufficient drug penetration into cartilage tissue to reach cell and matrix targets at the concentrations necessary to elicit the desired ...biological response. Here, we provide our perspective on the utilization of charge-charge (electrostatic) interactions to enhance drug penetration and transport into cartilage, and to enable sustained binding of drugs within the tissue's highly negatively charged extracellular matrix. By coupling drugs to positively charged nanocarriers that have optimal size and charge, cartilage can be converted from a drug barrier into a drug reservoir for sustained intra-tissue delivery. Alternatively, a wide variety of drugs themselves can be made cartilage-penetrating by functionalizing them with specialized positively charged protein domains. Finally, we emphasize that appropriate animal models, with cartilage thickness similar to that of humans, must be used for the study of drug transport and retention in cartilage.
Active transport in the cytoplasm plays critical roles in living cell physiology. However, the mechanical resistance that intracellular compartments experience, which is governed by the cytoplasmic ...material property, remains elusive, especially its dependence on size and speed. Here we use optical tweezers to drag a bead in the cytoplasm and directly probe the mechanical resistance with varying size a and speed V. We introduce a method, combining the direct measurement and a simple scaling analysis, to reveal different origins of the size- and speed-dependent resistance in living mammalian cytoplasm. We show that the cytoplasm exhibits size-independent viscoelasticity as long as the effective strain rate V/a is maintained in a relatively low range (0.1 s−1 < V/a < 2 s−1) and exhibits size-dependent poroelasticity at a high effective strain rate regime (5 s−1 < V/a < 80 s−1). Moreover, the cytoplasmic modulus is found to be positively correlated with only V/a in the viscoelastic regime but also increases with the bead size at a constant V/a in the poroelastic regime. Based on our measurements, we obtain a full-scale state diagram of the living mammalian cytoplasm, which shows that the cytoplasm changes from a viscous fluid to an elastic solid, as well as from compressible material to incompressible material, with increases in the values of two dimensionless parameters, respectively. This state diagram is useful to understand the underlying mechanical nature of the cytoplasm in a variety of cellular processes over a broad range of speed and size scales.
Osteoarthritis is a debilitating joint disease affecting nearly 30 million people for which there are no disease-modifying therapies. Several drugs that have failed clinical trials have shown ...inefficient and inadequate delivery to target cells. Anabolic growth factors are one class of such drugs that could be disease-modifying if delivered directly to chondrocytes, which reside deep within dense, anionic cartilage tissue. To overcome this biological barrier, we conjugated a growth factor to a cationic nanocarrier for targeted delivery to chondrocytes and retention within joint cartilage after direct intra-articular injection. The nanocarrier uses reversible electrostatic interactions with anionic cartilage tissue to improve tissue binding, penetration, and residence time. Amine terminal polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers were end functionalized with variable molar ratios of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) to control surface charge. From this small family of variably PEGylated dendrimers, an optimal formulation showing 70% uptake into cartilage tissue and 100% cell viability was selected. When conjugated to insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), the dendrimer penetrated bovine cartilage of human thickness within 2 days and enhanced therapeutic IGF-1 joint residence time in rat knees by 10-fold for up to 30 days. In a surgical model of rat osteoarthritis, a single injection of dendrimer-IGF-1 rescued cartilage and bone more effectively than free IGF-1. Dendrimer-IGF-1 reduced width of cartilage degeneration by 60% and volumetric osteophyte burden by 80% relative to untreated rats at 4 weeks after surgery. These results suggest that PEGylated PAMAM dendrimer nanocarriers could improve pharmacokinetics and efficacy of disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs in the clinic.
Lubricin is a secreted proteoglycan encoded by the Prg4 locus that is abundantly expressed by superficial zone articular chondrocytes and has been noted to both be sensitive to mechanical loading and ...protect against the development of osteoarthritis. In this study, we document that running induces maximal expression of Prg4 in the superficial zone of knee joint articular cartilage in a COX-2-dependent fashion, which correlates with augmented levels of phospho-S133 CREB and increased nuclear localization of CREB-regulated transcriptional coactivators (CRTCs) in this tissue. Furthermore, we found that fluid flow shear stress (FFSS) increases secretion of extracellular PGE2, PTHrP, and ATP (by epiphyseal chondrocytes), which together engage both PKA- and Ca(++)-regulated signaling pathways that work in combination to promote CREB-dependent induction of Prg4, specifically in superficial zone articular chondrocytes. Because running and FFSS both boost Prg4 expression in a COX-2-dependent fashion, our results suggest that mechanical motion may induce Prg4 expression in the superficial zone of articular cartilage by engaging the same signaling pathways activated in vitro by FFSS that promote CREB-dependent gene expression in this tissue.
In this study, atomic force microscopy-based dynamic oscillatory and force-relaxation indentation was employed to quantify the time-dependent nanomechanics of native (untreated) and proteoglycan ...(PG)-depleted cartilage disks, including indentation modulus Eind, force-relaxation time constant τ, magnitude of dynamic complex modulus |E∗|, phase angle δ between force and indentation depth, storage modulus E′, and loss modulus E″. At ∼2 nm dynamic deformation amplitude, |E∗| increased significantly with frequency from 0.22 ± 0.02 MPa (1 Hz) to 0.77 ± 0.10 MPa (316 Hz), accompanied by an increase in δ (energy dissipation). At this length scale, the energy dissipation mechanisms were deconvoluted: the dynamic frequency dependence was primarily governed by the fluid-flow-induced poroelasticity, whereas the long-time force relaxation reflected flow-independent viscoelasticity. After PG depletion, the change in the frequency response of |E∗| and δ was consistent with an increase in cartilage local hydraulic permeability. Although untreated disks showed only slight dynamic amplitude-dependent behavior, PG-depleted disks showed great amplitude-enhanced energy dissipation, possibly due to additional viscoelastic mechanisms. Hence, in addition to functioning as a primary determinant of cartilage compressive stiffness and hydraulic permeability, the presence of aggrecan minimized the amplitude dependence of |E∗| at nanometer-scale deformation.
The survival benefit of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients is limited to a few months because of acquired resistance. We show that ...anti-VEGF therapy induced remodeling of the extracellular matrix with subsequent alteration of the physical properties of colorectal liver metastases. Preoperative treatment with bevacizumab in patients with colorectal liver metastases increased hyaluronic acid (HA) deposition within the tumors. Moreover, in two syngeneic mouse models of CRC metastasis in the liver, we show that anti-VEGF therapy markedly increased the expression of HA and sulfated glycosaminoglycans (sGAGs), without significantly changing collagen deposition. The density of these matrix components correlated with increased tumor stiffness after anti-VEGF therapy. Treatment-induced tumor hypoxia appeared to be the driving force for the remodeling of the extracellular matrix. In preclinical models, we show that enzymatic depletion of HA partially rescued the compromised perfusion in liver mCRCs after anti-VEGF therapy and prolonged survival in combination with anti-VEGF therapy and chemotherapy. These findings suggest that extracellular matrix components such as HA could be a potential therapeutic target for reducing physical barriers to systemic treatments in patients with mCRC who receive anti-VEGF therapy.