Bone morphogenetic proteins in cartilage biology

Cartilage repair and regeneration is a major obstacle in orthopedic medicine. The importance is enormous since osteoarthritis (OA) is a major cause of disability among the adult population in the United States and degenerative disc disease (DDD) is responsible for a significant amount of the chronic back pain. OA is considered a process of attempted, but gradually failing, repair of damaged cartilage extracellular matrix, as the balance between synthesis and breakdown of matrix components is disturbed and shifted towards catabolism. In recent times, members of the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) family of proteins have demonstrated a great potential as anabolic factors for cartilage repair because of their ability to induce matrix synthesis and promote repair in cartilage.