Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for Osteoarthritis: Practice and Possible Promises

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common progressively degenerative joint disease that affects more than 300 million people worldwide. OA is manifested by articular cartilage degradation, chronic pain, deformity, functional disability, and decreased quality of life. A real challenge in OA management is the lack of an effective cure because exiting therapeutics often provide symptom control rather than disease modification; therefore, they fail to prevent disease progression. The inadequate treatments for OA management have encouraged researchers to study mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) as an investigational treatment for OA. MSCs are a promising tool for OA because of their availability; expand cultivation and multi-lineage differentiation capacity as well as well-documented paracrine function have made MSCs a promising tool in this field. Accordingly, MSCs application has been successfully utilized in a broad range of pre-clinical OA animal models as well as clinical studies with the aim of cartilage repair which had not previously been achieved using classical treatments. Here, the brief scientific review of MSC role in the control of OA as well as the proposed mechanisms are discussed. We provide an insight into the last 10 years' studies conducted on preclinical and clinical OA treatment as well as future opportunities in OA management strategies employing MSCs.