Tokyo [Japan], July 28 : Bones can regenerate and mend themselves, but when the damage is more severe than a minor break or chip, they frequently are unable to do so.
In a study that was recently published in the journal Inflammation and Regeneration, Japanese researchers created a method for enhancing bone regeneration across broad areas in rats.
Their findings may be applicable in clinical settings.
Bones can heal themselves after a slight break or fracture, as the most of us are aware from personal experience, leaving us in perfect condition. Unfortunately, bones frequently don't heal effectively after a larger damage or if a lot of bone must be removed due to something like a tumor. Despite the fact that there are numerous strategies to enhance bone repair over bigger areas in animal models, only few techniques are effective in human clinical settings.
Using vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which enhances blood vessel regeneration, and runt-related transcription factor 2 (Runx2), which is crucial for bone regeneration, a research team from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) chose to take on this issue.
"We had already used these two factors to improve bone regeneration in mice in a previous study," explained senior author of the study Keiji Itaka. "But we injected DNA, which can insert itself into the body's genetic information, rather than RNA, which cannot; this meant that our findings had little clinical relevance because of the risks involved."
In their new study, the researchers used messenger RNA encoding VEGF and Runx2. They first demonstrated that the combination of these two RNAs led to a better regenerative response in bone cells than each RNA alone. Next, they injected the RNA combination into rats with large jawbone lesions. After three weekly injections, the jawbones of these mice were almost completely healed, unlike those of control mice. Importantly, their technique may have similar results in a clinical setting and is likely to be safe for use in humans.
"Our technique is especially promising for clinical use because of the coating that we used for the VEGF and Runx2 RNA," explains Maorui Zhang, lead author of the study. "Many previous studies have used lipid nanoparticles, but this coating leads to inflammation, limiting its clinical use. We used a coating that we had developed previously, known as polyplex nanomicelles, which leads to very little inflammation."
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