Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

Clinical phenotypes, molecular endotypes and theratypes in OA therapeutic development

Understanding the molecular endotypes that influence clinical phenotypes is a critical step for the stratification of patients with osteoarthritis (OA) into therapeutic subtypes that can help the development of targeted disease-modifying OA drugs (DMOADs) to provide genuine, long-term clinical benefit.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Interactions that determine phenotypes and theratypes.

References

  1. Latourte, A., Kloppenburg, M. & Richette, P. Emerging pharmaceutical therapies for osteoarthritis. Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 16, 673–688 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Oo, W. M. Prospects of disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs. Clin. Geriatr. Med. 38, 397–432 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Oo, W. M., Little, C., Duong, V. & Hunter, D. J. The development of disease-modifying therapies for osteoarthritis (DMOADs): the evidence to date. Drug Des. Devel. Ther. 15, 2921–2945 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Mobasheri, A. et al. Molecular taxonomy of osteoarthritis for patient stratification, disease management and drug development: biochemical markers associated with emerging clinical phenotypes and molecular endotypes. Curr. Opin. Rheumatol. 31, 80–89 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Agache, I. & Akdis, C. A. Precision medicine and phenotypes, endotypes, genotypes, regiotypes, and theratypes of allergic diseases. J. Clin. Invest. 129, 1493–503 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Boer, C. G. et al. Deciphering osteoarthritis genetics across 826,690 individuals from 9 populations. Cell 184, 4784–4818.e17 (2021).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  7. Angelini, F. et al. Osteoarthritis endotype discovery via clustering of biochemical marker data. Ann. Rheum. Dis. 81, 666–675 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Demanse, D. et al. Unsupervised machine-learning algorithms for the identification of clinical phenotypes in the osteoarthritis initiative database. Semin Arthritis Rheum. 58, 152140 (2023).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Saxer, F. et al. Prognostic value of B-score for predicting joint replacement in the context of osteoarthritis phenotypes: Data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative. Osteoarthr. Cartil. Open 6, 100458 (2024).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Arbeeva, L., Minnig, M. C., Yates, K. A. & Nelson, A. E. Machine learning approaches to the prediction of osteoarthritis phenotypes and outcomes. Curr. Rheumatol. Rep. 25, 213–225 (2023).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

A.M. acknowledges support from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Association, Action CA21110-Building an open European Network on OsteoArthritis research (NetwOArk). R.L. recognizes support from the US National Institutes of Health (grant P30 AR072580) and the Rheumatology Research Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ali Mobasheri.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mobasheri, A., Loeser, R. Clinical phenotypes, molecular endotypes and theratypes in OA therapeutic development. Nat Rev Rheumatol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-024-01126-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-024-01126-4

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing