Researchers discover potential cellular target for eliminating bone breakdown in osteoporosis

New research has discovered a cell type that governs the way bones form and maintain themselves, opening up a potential target for future therapies for bone disorders like osteoporosis. Led by faculty from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a rodent study showed that bone marrow adipogenic lineage precursors (MALPs) play a distinct role in the way bones remodel themselves. Defects in this process are the key issue at play in osteoporosis, so a therapy using these MALP cells to better regulate bone remodeling could result in better treatments. This research was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Discovering new cellular and molecular mechanisms to control bone turnover will enable fine-tuning of existing therapies or design of novel therapeutics. For example, with the advance of gene-editing technology and novel cell-specific delivery approaches, in the future it would be possible to regulate MALP behavior as a therapy for bone disorders like osteoporosis."

Ling Qin, PhD, study's senior author, associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery

Healthy bone maintenance is a balance between osteoblasts, which secrete the materials necessary to form new bone, and osteoclasts, which absorb old bone material to make way for the new. A disruption in this balance one way or the other can result in unhealthy bone. In the case of osteoporosis, overactive osteoclasts eat away at bone faster than it can be reformed, resulting in bones that are less dense and more susceptible to fracture.

The general consensus among scientists was that osteoblasts and osteocytes, the cells within fully-formed bone, were the ones that kicked off the production of osteoclasts to begin the remodeling of bone. On the other hand, the role of adipocyte lineage cells, such as MALPs, in regulating the resorption of bone was not known.
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