Intra-articular sustained-release of pirfenidone as a disease-modifying treatment for early osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a major clinical challenge, and effective disease-modifying drugs for OA are still lacking due to the complicated pathology and scattered treatment targets. Effective early treatments are urgently needed to prevent OA progression. The excessive amount of transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) is one of the major causes of synovial fibrosis and subchondral bone sclerosis, and such pathogenic changes in early OA precede cartilage damage.

Development of an image processing software for quantification of histological calcification staining images.

Quantification of the histological staining images gives important insights in biomedical research. In wet lab, it is common to have some stains off the target to become unwanted noisy stains during the generation of histological staining images. The current tools designed for quantification of histological staining images do not consider such situations; instead, the stained region is identified based on assumptions that the background is pure and clean.

"Slow walk" mimetic tensile loading maintains human meniscus tissue resident progenitor cells homeostasis in photocrosslinked gelatin hydrogel.

Meniscus, the cushion in knee joint, is a load-bearing tissue that transfers mechanical forces to extracellular matrix (ECM) and tissue resident cells. The mechanoresponse of human tissue resident stem/progenitor cells in meniscus (hMeSPCs) is significant to tissue homeostasis and regeneration but is not well understood. This study reports that a mild cyclic tensile loading regimen of ∼1800 loads/day on hMeSPCs seeded in 3-dimensional (3D) photocrosslinked gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogel is critical in maintaining cellular homeostasis.

Subchondral Bone Remodeling: A Therapeutic Target for Osteoarthritis.

There is emerging awareness that subchondral bone remodeling plays an important role in the development of osteoarthritis (OA). This review presents recent investigations on the cellular and molecular mechanism of subchondral bone remodeling, and summarizes the current interventions and potential therapeutic targets related to OA subchondral bone remodeling. The first part of this review covers key cells and molecular mediators involved in subchondral bone remodeling (osteoclasts, osteoblasts, osteocytes, bone extracellular matrix, vascularization, nerve innervation, and related signaling pathways).