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 online on November 18, 2020 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The open-access article is titled “Bone Marrow Adipogenic Lineage Precursors (MALPs) Promote Osteoclastogenesis in Bone Remodeling and Pathologic Bone Loss.” "Discovering new cellular and molecular mechanisms to control bone turnover will enable fine-tuning of existing therapies or design of novel therapeutics," said the study's senior author, Ling Qin, PhD, an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery. "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." 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.Login Or Register To Read Full Story