Bone Abstracts

Caspase-7 belongs to executive apoptotic and pro-inflammatory caspases. Recent reports point to novel roles of these caspases, particularly in cell differentiation. As we revealed such function of caspase-7 in odontogenesis, we turned our attention to participation of this molecule in formation of hard tissue in general.In this work, both type of bones, intramembranous (mandibular/alveolar bone), and endochondral (long bones) were investigated. Mouse hea...

Among activation of apoptotic machinery, Fas (CD95)/FasL (CD178) were suggested to act in cell proliferation and differentiation. Expression of Fas and FasL was reported during tooth and bone formation. The examination of gld mice showed increased total body bone mass and number of osteoblasts in long bones. However, Fas and FasL functions in osteogenesis remain controversial. As most of studies dealing with Fas/FasL system in bone formation were performed in endochondral mode...

A major limitation in the development of cellular therapies using human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) is cell survival post-transplantation. In this study, we challenged the current paradigm of hMSC survival, which assigned a pivotal role to oxygen, by testing the hypothesis that exogenous glucose may be key to hMSC survival. We demonstrated that hMSCs could endure sustained near-anoxia conditions only in the presence of glucose. In this in vitro cell model, the prot...