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Regenerative medicine

Breaking Prometheus's curse for cartilage regeneration

Like the mythical eagle devouring Prometheus's liver as fast as it regrew, chronic inflammation hinders cartilage regeneration in inflammatory arthritis. Using stem cells engineered to secrete anti-inflammatory molecules in response to local inflammatory factors could provide a way to keep the eagle at bay as the stem cells differentiate into chondrocytes.

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Figure 1: CRISPR–Cas9-based reprogramming of chondrogenic stem cells to combat inflammation.

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Acknowledgements

The author's research is supported by INSERM, the University and hospital of Montpellier, the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative-funded project BeTheCure (#115142) and the Arthritis Foundation Courtin.

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Correspondence to Florence Apparailly.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Apparailly, F. Breaking Prometheus's curse for cartilage regeneration. Nat Rev Rheumatol 13, 516–518 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2017.116

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