Coupling of bone resorption and formation by RANKL reverse signalling
- Journal:
- Nature
- Published:
- DOI:
- 10.1038/s41586-018-0482-7
- Affiliations:
- 8
- Authors:
- 13
Research Highlight
Reverse signalling gives bone growth a boost
© QAI Publishing/Getty
A well-known bone-removal pathway can operate in reverse to stimulate bone production, a Japan-led team has discovered. This finding could lead to new therapies for osteoporosis and other skeletal disorders.
A group that included scientists from Tokyo Medical and Dental University showed that bone-resorbing cells secrete a kind of membrane-bound packet, called a vesicle, with the RANK receptor on its surface. RANK’s binding partner, RANKL, is normally discharged from bone-forming cells, but the researchers showed that it can also stay on the cell surface, where it binds RANK-bearing vesicles to promote bone formation.
The researchers developed an antibody drug that, because of its dual mechanism of action, could prove more efficacious than other anti-RANKL agents on the market. The novel RANKL-targeted antibody not only inhibited bone resorption, as other drugs do, it also promoted bone growth by activating bone-forming cells with RANKL displayed on their surface.
References
- Nature 561, 195–200 (2018). doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0482-7
| Institutions | Authors | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU), Japan | 0.31 | |
| The University of Tokyo (UTokyo), Japan | 0.23 | |
| The University of Tokyo Hospital, Japan | 0.23 | |
| Kyoto University, Japan | 0.08 | |
| Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA), Austria | 0.08 | |
| Matsumoto Dental University (MDU), Japan | 0.08 |