It’s known that, as we get older, 15-PGDH becomes more abundant and interferes with the molecules that repair tissue and reduce inflammation.<\/p>\n
That link to aging is what led the Stanford team to question whether the same protein might be driving osteoarthritis \u2013 a condition that’s caused by the breakdown of cartilage collagen, resulting in pain and inflammation in the joint.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In old mice, blocking 15-PGDH thickened cartilage that had already worn away. <\/p>\n
And in young mice with a fresh injury, it prevented the arthritis that usually follows. To test this, the researchers recreated the mouse equivalent of an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear and then blocked 15-PGDH. The osteoarthritis that you’d normally expect to see after such an injury didn’t occur.<\/p>\n
What’s especially interesting is that in this study, stem cells<\/a> didn’t seem to play a part. <\/p>\n Chondrocytes<\/a>, the adult cells that already build and maintain cartilage, were actually able to become healthier once 15-PGDH was reduced.<\/p>\n “This is a new way of regenerating adult tissue, and it has significant clinical promise for treating arthritis due to aging or injury,” Stanford University stem cell<\/a> biologist Helen Blau said<\/a> in November last year when the research was first published.<\/p>\n “We were looking for stem cells, but they are clearly not involved. It’s very exciting.” <\/p>\n As you can see below, the aged mice with cartilage with 15-PGDH blocked (far right) had cartilage that appeared similar to young, healthy cartilage (left).<\/p>\n It wasn’t only mice. The team also tested the approach on human cartilage taken from people undergoing knee replacement surgery and saw the same pattern: tissue that became stiffer and less inflamed after treatment.<\/p>\n “The mechanism is quite striking and really shifted our perspective about how tissue regeneration can occur,” explained<\/a> orthopedic scientist Nidhi Bhutani.<\/p>\n “It’s clear that a large pool of already existing cells in cartilage are changing their gene expression patterns. And by targeting these cells for regeneration, we may have an opportunity to have a bigger overall impact clinically.”<\/p>\n This one potential therapy is exciting enough on its own, but it’s just one contender in what’s becoming a genuinely crowded race to end osteoarthritis.<\/p>\n The US government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)<\/a> has put forward more than US$100 million<\/a> to fast-track several separate teams chasing the same basic goal through different biology, under a program called NITRO<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two years in, those teams have already regenerated both cartilage and bone in animals, and the next milestone is people.<\/p>\n One of the recipients of the grants, the University of Colorado Boulder, made headlines<\/a> earlier this year when researchers unveiled a slow-release drug-delivery system that is injected into the damaged joint and coaxes the body’s own cartilage and bone cells to repair themselves in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n The tests so far have all been in animal models, but they’ve now spun out their research into a company called Renovare Therapeutics, which is focused on clinical trials<\/a> in humans.<\/p>\n “In two years, we were able to go from a moonshot idea to developing these therapies to demonstrating that they reverse osteoarthritis in animals,”\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0chemical and biological engineer Stephanie Bryant, from the University of Colorado Boulder in a press release earlier this year.<\/p>\n “Our goal is not just to treat pain and halt progression, but to end this disease.”<\/p>\n A team at Columbia University has also received an ARPA-H grant, but they’ve taken quite a different approach<\/a>: 3D-printing a living human knee scaffold seeded with stem cells that dissolves as the body regrows its own cartilage and bone around it.<\/p>\n “NITRO, ARPA-H’s first program, was launched with the question: What if we could make our joints heal themselves?” said program manager Ross Uhrich<\/a>. <\/p>\n “Two years later, it’s not only possible, but quickly becoming a reality.”<\/p>\n In the meantime, there may be a potential treatment that’s already widely in use. <\/p>\n A 2026 study found that semaglutide appears to protect joints<\/a> \u2013 and it appears to do so via a mechanism that’s independent of easing pressure through weight loss.<\/p>\n The team from China and the US found that the drug reprograms the metabolism of cells that maintain healthy cartilage, allowing them to generate more energy.<\/p>\n In mice and humans with obesity and osteoarthritis, treatment with semaglutide reduced pain and decreased cartilage degeneration. <\/p>\n In mice, they included a control group that ate the same amount as the semaglutide-treated animals. Even with comparable weight changes, that control group did not receive the same cartilage protection, suggesting a weight-loss-independent effect on the joint itself.<\/p>\n While more research needs to be done, the fact that many people already take semaglutide means it’s something that can be studied further going forward.<\/p>\n Related: Experimental Drug Can Reverse Osteoarthritis in Weeks, Animal Research Shows<\/a><\/p>\n For the Stanford team, the next step will include a clinical trial<\/a>. <\/p>\n That can be a long process, but a 15-PGDH blocker to combat muscle weakness<\/a> has already been tested in a previous human trial<\/a> and didn’t raise any red flags for health and safety, which should speed up the trial process for similar drugs.<\/p>\n “We are very excited about this potential breakthrough,”\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Blau.<\/p>\n “Imagine regrowing existing cartilage and avoiding joint replacement.”<\/p>\n The study was published in the journal\u00a0Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Clare Watson<\/a> and edited by Clare Watson<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most disappointing and most relatable parts of aging is the experience of a joint no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1352,79],"class_list":["post-813410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-msft-content","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Breakthrough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MouseScans-2.jpg\")
Treated aged cartilage (far right, stained red) looked much more like young, healthy cartilage (far left, stained red). (Singla et al.,\u00a0Science, 2025)<\/p>\n![\"Breakthrough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/novaknee_columbia_n2a3101_newsroom-1200x515.jpg\")
A 3D-printed knee scaffold. (Columbia University<\/a>)<\/p>\n![\"Subscribe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/FOMO-1200x628-_Dont-miss-the-next-breakthrough_-cosmic-colourful-642x336.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n