Abstract
The remarkable lubrication properties of normal articular cartilage play an essential role in daily life, providing almost frictionless movements of joints. Alterations of cartilage surface or degradation of biomacromolecules within synovial fluid increase the wear and tear of the cartilage and hence determining the onset of the most common joint disease, osteoarthritis (OA). The irreversible and progressive degradation of articular cartilage is the hallmark of OA. Considering the absence of effective options to treat OA, the mechanosensitivity of chondrocytes has captured attention. As the only embedded cells in cartilage, the metabolism of chondrocytes is essential in maintaining homeostasis of cartilage, which triggers motivations to understand what is behind the low friction of cartilage and develop biolubrication-based strategies to postpone or even possibly heal OA. This review firstly focuses on the mechanism of cartilage lubrication, particularly on boundary lubrication. Then the mechanotransduction (especially shear stress) of chondrocytes is discussed. The following summarizes the recent development of cartilage-inspired biolubricants to highlight the correlation between cartilage lubrication and OA. One might expect that the restoration of cartilage lubrication at the early stage of OA could potentially promote the regeneration of cartilage and reverse its pathology to cure OA.
Highlights
Articular cartilage is an avascular, aneural and alymphatic connective tissue lining the bone ends of diarthrodial joints [1]
In this review, starting from the articular cartilage, we focus on discussing the boundary lubrication mechanism of cartilage, following by the shear-associated metabolism of chondrocytes, which could be fully taken advantage of to trigger cartilage regeneration, and we review the recent biolubricants inspired by cartilage lubrication, a common theme of these inspired biolubricants is to resurface and restore the boundary lubrication of cartilage, and subsequently, alleviate the symptoms or even reverse the pathological progression of OA by promoting the regeneration of cartilage
Articular cartilage is a highly hydrated glassy connective tissue comprised of chondrocytes and the extracellular matrix (ECM) which is secreted and maintained by chondrocytes [1,31]
Summary
Articular cartilage is an avascular, aneural and alymphatic connective tissue (which determines its very poor self-recovery ability) lining the bone ends of diarthrodial joints [1]. Researchers noticed that the increase of cartilage friction plays a determining role in initiating the most common degenerative joint disability disease, that is osteoarthritis (OA), which is mainly characterized by the progressive but irreversible degradation of articular cartilage [5,6,7,8,9]. The cartilage degradation fragments are phagocytosed cells (such as macrophage and synovial fibroblasts) to inflame the synovium, promoting the production of MMPs and ADMATS to break down cartilage and deteriorate lubrication [10,11,12,13,14,15] In this way, a positive feedback loop is formed due to the mutually reinforcing effect of increased friction and secretion of degradation enzymes, resulting in the progressive till total degradation of articular cartilage. In this review, starting from the articular cartilage, we focus on discussing the boundary lubrication mechanism of cartilage, following by the shear-associated metabolism of chondrocytes, which could be fully taken advantage of to trigger cartilage regeneration, and we review the recent biolubricants inspired by cartilage lubrication, a common theme of these inspired biolubricants is to resurface and restore the boundary lubrication of cartilage, and subsequently, alleviate the symptoms or even reverse the pathological progression of OA by promoting the regeneration of cartilage
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