Researchers have discovered a new type of bone cells, called “osteomorphs,” which may be targeted for osteoporosis and other skeletal diseases.
The discovery came when Dr. Tri Giang Phan of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Darlinghurst, New South Wales and colleagues were studying osteoclasts, cells that resorb bone.
The osteomorphs were able to fuse together to form osteoclasts in a process the team calls “cellular recycling.”
As reported in Cell, the researchers performed single cell RNA sequencing to profile the genes that were highly expressed by osteomorphs. Those genes were shown to be important in bone structure and function in mice.
“Working with colleagues at Imperial College in London,” Dr. Phan said, “we showed that when 17 of these genes were knocked out, the mice developed abnormal bones.” Specifically, the deletions impacted the amount of bone, as well as bone strength.
Genes upregulated by osteomorphs also were shown to be important in human bone diseases. Specifically, investigation of human orthologues of osteomorph-upregulated genes were found to be involved in rare skeletal dysplasias caused by single-gene defects. Seventy-one of the genes also were found to be involved in the regulation of bone mineral density in a large population cohort, the UK Biobank Study, and may therefore be important in osteoporosis.
Source: Reuters