Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic degenerative disease that mostly occurs in elderly individuals over 60 years old. The detailed pathogenesis of OA is unclear. Medicines available on the market are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Therefore, in this study, a fusion protein was introduced, and the detailed mechanism that could alleviate OA was discussed. As a targeted protein, HB-NC4 showed better binding ability to chondrocytes, and its half-life period was prolonged compared to NC4 alone. In addition, HB-NC4 can not only affect the levels of C3 and C5, but also inhibit the formation of the membrane-attack complex (MAC, C5b-9), thereby further affecting the expression of MAPK signalling pathway-related proteins to achieve the goal of treating OA. Thus, in this study, we demonstrate the pharmacokinetics of HB-NC4 and its mechanism to alleviate OA by regulating the complement system and MAPK signalling pathway. This study provides a new method for OA therapy based on fusion proteins.