REVIEW ARTICLE mTOR: A Potential Therapeutic Target in Osteoarthritis?

The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic degenerative joint disease characterized by the progressive loss of ar-ticular cartilage, remodeling of the subchondral bone, and synovial inflammation. Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a serine/threonine protein kinase that controls critical cellular processes such as growth, proliferation, and protein synthesis. Recent studies suggest that mTOR plays a vital role in cartilage growth and development and in altering the articular cartilage homeostasis as well as contributing to the process of cartilage degeneration asso-ciated with OA. Both pharmacological inhibition and ge-netic deletion of mTOR have been shown to reduce the severity of OA in preclinical mouse models. In this review article, we discuss the roles of mTOR in cartilage devel-opment, in maintaining articular cartilage homeostasis, and its potential as an OA therapeutic target.