The Emerging Role of Glucose Metabolism in Cartilage Development

Proper cartilage development is critical to bone formation during endochondral ossification. This review highlights the current understanding of various aspects of glucose metabolism in chondrocytes during cartilage development. Recent studies indicate that chondrocytes transdifferentiate into osteoblasts and bone marrow stromal cells during endochondral ossification. In cartilage development, signaling molecules, including IGF2 and BMP2, tightly control glucose uptake and utilization in a stage-specific manner. Perturbation of glucose metabolism alters the course of chondrocyte maturation, suggesting a key role for glucose metabolism during endochondral ossification. During prenatal and postnatal growth, chondrocytes experience bursts of nutrient availability and energy expenditure, which demand sophisticated control of the glucose-dependent processes of cartilage matrix production, cell proliferation, and hypertrophy. Investigating the regulation of glucose metabolism may therefore lead to a unifying mechanism for signaling events in cartilage development and provide insight into causes of skeletal growth abnormalities.