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A new experimental strategy developed by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge (United States), allows drug against osteoarthritis access the cartilage inside the joints and regenerate it. The advance, tested in the rat, is a step forward in the realization of a treatment that slows the progression of this disease, for which today there is no cure.
Osteoarthritis is a progressive degeneration of joint cartilage due to aging or injury. This pathology affects 300 million people worldwide and has no setbacks because cartilage is a tissue that can not be regenerated. Although some treatments may lessen the symptoms of osteoarthritis, there is no treatment today that can slow down its progression. When the pharmacological treatment is not enough, the patient can opt for a surgical procedure to introduce a prosthesis into the affected joint, procedure that is neither risk-free nor definitive.
Osteoarthritis is a progressive degeneration of joint cartilage due to aging or injury.
One of the main obstacles is the difficult access to cartilage for drugs. Most are removed from the joints before they can have an effect or can not penetrate inside the cartilage, where are the cells that produce it, the chondrocytes, so that they can not not fulfill their function.
Researchers led by MIT have sought a strategy to overcome this obstacle. They designed a nanocarrier: a molecule that acts as a vehicle capable of penetrating the cartilage and bringing a drug to the chondrocytes. The molecule consists of a spherical part to which the drug binds, branch-shaped structures with a positive electrical charge and a compound called PEG.
Since the cartilage has a negative charge, the positive charges of the nanocarrier cause it to adhere to the tissue. PEG, on the other hand, allows it to pierce the cartilage and reach the chondrocytes.
Researchers have developed a nanocarrier: a molecule that can penetrate the cartilage and bring a drug to chondrocytes.
As published today in the magazine
Translational medicine science
Scientists have added a drug called IGF-1 to the nanocarrier, which stimulates cartilage production and the survival and growth of chondrocytes. To test the strategy, they injected the drug into the nanocarrier in the knee joints of rats suffering from osteoarthritis as a result of an injury. Treatment reduces the degeneration of cartilage, inflammation and the appearance of bone disorders related to osteoarthritis. Compared to the injection of IGF-1 alone, the combination with the nanocarrier has multiplied by ten the half-life of the drug in the joints. In addition, this concentration was maintained for thirty days at effective concentrations in the cartilage; a bi-weekly or monthly injection would therefore probably be sufficient.
On the other hand, researchers have verified in the cow cartilage that the strategy allowed the drug to traverse thicknesses of this tissue up to one millimeter, a scale similar to that of human joints.
The nanocarrier could adapt to other medications and treat osteoarthritis associated with aging. Before they can begin to be tested on humans, the authors should however try it on other larger animals, with joints more similar to those of humans.
"This is a very interesting study," says Josep Vergés, physician and president of the International Foundation for Osteoarthritis (OAFI), who did not participate in the research. According to Vergés, if applied to humans and was equally effective in rats, the new strategy could improve the quality of life of patients, since one or two injections per month would suffice. "But it remains to be seen if this is confirmed by clinical trials," says Verges, adding that it can take between four and eight years before the therapeutic strategy is commercially available.
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