Implementation of Functional Genomics for Bench-to-Bedside Transition in Osteoarthritis

Collaborative work has led to the identification of robust osteoarthritis susceptibility genes. The translation of these gene deviations towards underlying biological mechanisms remains challenging yet necessary to allow the transition of these results in drug development and to applications in the clinic. Besides the availability of disease-relevant tissues which will contribute to a deeper insight into ongoing pathophysiological processes as result of the gene deviations, availability of respective cells will be key to establish in vitro models to further characterize genetic variants at a transcriptional and functional level. To allow exploration of effective use of drugs and biologicals such findings should eventually be further tested in in vivo models. In this review, we discuss possibilities for the implementation of an effective functional genomic pipeline for bench-to-bedside translation of identified susceptibility loci.