Inhibiting a single enzyme may be enough to block the development of arthritis, research suggests. Scientists prevented the gradual loss of protective cartilage around the joints that leads to arthritis by modifying a gene for a key enzyme. The US and Australian teams hope their work could lead to treatments to combat osteoarthritis and possibly inflammatory arthritis. Details of the research, on mice, are published in the journal Nature. Cartilage contains a crucial component called aggrecan, which functions like a shock absorber, helping the tissue bear load and resist compression. Normal healthy cartilage has lots of aggrecan, but in arthritis aggrecan is destroyed by a family of enzymes called the aggrecanases, and the cartilage loses its shock-absorbing capacity. The researchers, from US company Wyeth and Australia’s University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, have discovered one particular member of the aggrecanase family, aggrecanase-2, plays a crucial role in this destructive process. They genetically engineered mice that lacked a part of one such enzyme, aggrecanase-2. They found that these animals were largely protected from cartilage destruction.
