Protein combination improves bone regeneration, UCLA study shows

A UCLA research team has found a combination of proteins that could significantly improve clinical bone restoration. The findings may be a big step toward developing effective therapeutic treatments for bone skeletal defects, bone loss and osteoporosis. The study, led by Dr. Kang Ting, professor and chair of the section of orthodontics at the UCLA School of Dentistry; Dr. Chia Soo, professor of plastic surgery and vice chair for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; and Dr. Aaron James, a fellow in surgical pathology, will appear as the lead article in the February print edition of the American Journal of Pathology. Current treatments for bone skeletal defects utilize bone morphogenetic protein-2, or BMP2, an FDA-approved bone-healing protein. But the high concentrations needed to induce human bone formation may have serious side effects, including life-threatening cervical swelling and abnormal and inconsistent bone growth. The same research team has conducted other studies on bone growth, including one that utilized a protein called NELL-1, which successfully increased bone formation and stimulated key factors for bone growth in multiple preclinical models. In the new study, the team paired the NELL-1 protein, which Ting discovered, with BMP2. They found that the combination of the two proteins increased bone formation while inhibiting the formation of fat cells — a negative side effect of BMP2, which encourages stem cells to form both bone and fat cel...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news