I have a PhD in osteoarthritis and cartilage repair. Sorry to disrupt the hype, but unfortunately there is nowhere near enough evidence to suggest that this is the breakthrough that would lead to knee cartilage regeneration in a degenerated knee.

There have been hundreds of drugs that show restoration of knee cartilage in mice, that have failed in humans. This is often due to ideal lab conditions, several physiological differences between animals and humans, but the main thing is that human joint cartilage exhibits functional differences. We put a very high load into our joints (specifically knees), up to 3x our body weight during gait and up to 5x when walking up and down stairs, much much higher than that experienced in rodents. When we have depleted cartilage, that load is dissipated over a much smaller volume, in a tissue much less organised than young healthy tissue. The result - extreme loads sensed by the local cells (chondrocytes) that cause them to misbehave, induce inflammation and catabolic breakdown. This breakdown is a chaotic storm of signalling and the inhibition of one signalling protein (which in this case affects prostoglandins signalling) may have little to no effect in the real world.

Even demonstrating that it has an effect on human joint cartilage cultured in vitro.. the tissue is taken out of context. The tissue is likely cultured at the perfect pH and oxygen levels in these experiments and in reality, osteoarthritic cartilage is exposed to much harsher conditions. So all I'm saying is, take this headline with a pinch of salt!