From mechanism to medicine: The progress and potential of epigenetics in osteoarthritis

Abstract

Objective: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic, degenerative disease of the articular joints. The disease presents an enormous clinical and economic burden globally, due in part to the lack of disease modifying therapies. For over a decade, OA researchers have been working to determine epigenetic mechanisms underlying the disease to better understand pathology, identify biomarkers of progression, and pinpoint novel targets for therapeutic intervention.

Design: This article presents a summary of the 3rd International Workshop on the Epigenetics of Osteoarthritis held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in September 2024. The purpose of this meeting was to gather the international community to discuss the status of OA epigenetic research and share expertise on innovative techniques for future.

Results: Since the two previous meetings, there has been increasing adoption of advanced single-cell and spatial sequencing technologies and bioinfomatic analyses. Furthermore, investigations of multiple joint tissues has highlighted the shifting paradigm from OA as a cartilage centric disease to the consideration of all joint tissues.

Conclusions: The workshop provided a unique opportunity for early-career researchers to expand their network, and for all participants to discuss new or improved approaches to advance the field, including international consortia and data sharing. The highlights and outcomes from this OA epigenetics workshop are described in this report.

Fig. 1

An overview of omic techniques used and discussed during the 3rd International Workshop on the Epigenetics of Osteoarthritis. Assay for Transposase-Accessible Chromatin, ATAC; Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, NMR; Quantitative Trait Loci, QTL. Figure was created using Biorender.