An ECHO of Cartilage: Prediction of Combinatorial Treatments to Switch Between Transient and Permanent Cartilage Phenotypes With Validation.

A fundamental question in cartilage biology is: what determines the switch between permanent cartilage found in the articular joints and transient hypertrophic cartilage that functions as a template for bone? This switch is observed both in a subset of OA patients that develop osteophytes, as well as in cell-based tissue engineering strategies for joint repair. A thorough understanding of the mechanisms regulating cell fate provides opportunities for treatment of cartilage disease and tissue engineering strategies. The objective of this study was to understand the mechanisms that regulate the switch between permanent and transient cartilage using a computational model of chondrocytes, ECHO.