**3. Conclusions**

Even though there exist copious discoveries on the genetic factors as well as the molecular mechanisms surrounding cartilage degeneration, the efficacious treatment modalities remain elusive. Phage display provides an advantageous platform to study, diagnose and treat cartilage related diseases, since this provide a nano scale molecular mechanism that have the benefits of possessing higher tissue penetration, high specificities to cartilage, tunable, and hence can be leveraged for cartilage therapy, diagnoses, imaging and research application. By far, majority of phages used for display are biocompatible, and hence can serve as ideal drug delivery systems with minimal to no side effects to the human body upon administration, and should attain tremendous efficacy. The ability to fine tune drug loaded phages by functionalizing homing peptides to the phage particle offer a special pharmacokinetic characteristic, since it provides for regulated and targeted distribution of the payload, and ensure safety. Nonetheless, the use of phages for cartilage therapy still remains an obscured subject, and many obstacles should necessarily be surmounted. First, the choice of the right phage display libraries through phage biopanning is a critical step that will ensure the generation of the right ligand peptides for display. Secondly, there must be a concerted effort to direct cartilage studies to understand more cartilage targeting peptides and the specific genetic and molecular mechanisms that should be reversed in degenerated cartilage therapy process. The specific receptor target moieties, chondrocyte-ECM dynamic relationships, the biology of cartilage tissue ECM remodeling and ECM molecules secretion, deposition and recycling must all be understood *in vivo* to ensure enhanced application of phage technology for human cartilage regeneration.
