A $2.4 million grant from the National Institute on Aging will enable researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock to study mechanisms that could be manipulated to improve bone formation and bone strength in aging populations and in people with brittle bone disease.
Melda Onal, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, is the primary investigator for the project, which will receive the funding over five years from the division of the National Institutes of Health, according to a press release.
“The beauty of our skeleton is that it is a dynamic tissue that is constantly remodeled, with old bone being removed and new bone being formed throughout life,” said Onal, a member of the UAMS Center for Musculoskeletal Disease Research. “Our bones are constantly renewing themselves, even late in life. The reason people lose bone as they age is that the process becomes unbalanced — more bone is removed than replaced. One factor contributing to this imbalance is an age-related decline in bone formation. We aim to identify the reasons why bone formation declines with age, so we can reverse those cellular processes and halt osteoporosis. We have evidence that during aging, autophagy [the recycling process] declines in bone-forming cells, likely reducing their survival and function.”
She added that the overarching goal is to figure out how to stimulate bone formation in elderly people and in people with brittle bone disease, so that both groups have more bone mass and fewer fractures.
Other UAMS Center for Musculoskeletal Disease Research contributors to this project include Maria Almedia Schuller, Ph.D, an expert in aging; Roy Morello, Ph.D., an expert in OI; and Intawat Nookanew, Ph.D., an expert in bioinformatics.
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