Recently, there has been a renewed interest in adenosine‐derived AR agonists, due to the roles played by ARs in neurogenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinson), neuroprotection, autoimmune inflammation, osteoarthritis and cancer (Jacobson et al., 2018; Congreve et al., 2018; Müller et al., 2018; Jacobson et al., 2019; Zheng et al., 2019). Here, AR is linked to osteoarthritis.