Bone Abstracts

Introduction: The etiology of Paget’s disease of bone (PDB) is not fully understood, but genetic factors play a clearly important role. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of OPTN gene within PDB6 locus have been highly associated with PDB, but no PDB causal mutation or functional effect on PDB development were reported to date. We aimed to identify functional SNPs associated with this bone disease.Methods: Relevant candidate genes from PDB6 locu...

Constant remodeling of extracellular matrix is a hallmark during physiological conditions, such as stem cell differentiation, embryogenesis and tissue repair. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) play a key role in these processes. Mesenchymal stem cells derived from dental pulp are multipotent and have the capacity to differentiate into mesenchymal lineages. Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP) are a family of signaling molecules critically involved at various stages in the formation...

Paget’s disease of bone (PDB) is the second most common metabolic bone disorder, after osteoporosis. Optineurin (OPTN) gene, which is located within the PDB6 locus, and appears to be upregulated by TNFα and NF-kB, has been found to be associated with PDB in several European populations with PDB in genome-wide association studies. Several nucleotidic variations in OPTN were previously associated with PDB and may contribute to PDB pathogenesis. Recently, we have identi...

OPTN seems to have an important role in bone metabolism by being part of NfkB pathway. CCDC3 is highly expressed in adipocytes and it seems to be negatively regulated by TNFa, however the mechanisms are not very clear. These genes have a ‘head-to-head’ orientation in the genome, which suggests that they might be regulated by a bidirectional promoter that coordinates the expression of both genes in different tissues. Using bioinformatic tools we analyzed the shared re...

Optineurin (OPTN) is a protein encoded by the OPTN gene. This protein is involved in several cellular mechanisms such as autophagy, NF-κB signaling, cellular morphogenesis, membrane and vesicle trafficking, and transcription activation. Mutations in OPTN have been described in glaucoma, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurological diseases. More recently, a polymorphism in this gene was also identified by a genome wide association study to be ass...

The lactation has been considered a cause of bone loss in humans and animals. Studies have shown that during lactation, there is a significant reduction of bone mineral density. Rats at the end of lactation show reduced bone mass. The objective of this study was to verify the effect of lactation under osteogenic potential of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) of female rats. Twelve Wistar rats were distributed among the control and lactating groups. The experiment was...

α2C Evidences demonstrate that sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation causes osteopenia via β2-adrenoceptor (β2-AR) signaling. In a recent study, we showed that female mice with chronic sympathetic hyperactivity due to double knockout of adrenoceptors that negatively regulate norepinephrine release, α2A-AR and α2C-AR (α2A/α2C-ARKO), present an unexpected phenoty...

Marine cyanobacteria have been recognized as an important source of bioactive compounds. The cytotoxicity on cancer cell lines has been extensively explored and several cyanobacteria metabolites are already described as potential anticancer compounds or are considered useful templates for the design of new anticancer drugs. The majority of compounds have been isolated from filamentous or colonial cyanobacteria that growth in high densities along shores. In contrast, picoplankt...

Strontium ranelate is a promising drug used in the treatment of osteoporosis. This drug has a unique dual effect on bone turnover, simultaneously increasing bone formation by osteoblasts (anabolic effect) and decreasing bone resorption by osteoclasts (antiresorptive effect). The goal of this study was to evaluate: i) anabolic effects of strontium ranelate on the formation of bone-like mineralized matrix in osteoblast cell cultures and ii) changes the drug could cause on the ma...

Adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are of interest in the fields of cell therapy and tissue engineering thanks to their potential of differentiating into distinct cell lineages, e.g. osteoblast, chondrocyte, myoblast, and adipocyte. As the capacity of differentiation may vary according to the cell source, here, we compared the potential of osteoblast differentiation of MSCs derived from either bone marrow or adipose tissue. MSCs from rat bone marrow and adipose tissue were cu...