Osteoporosis is a disease that develops when bone mass decreases, which leads to increased risk of bone fractures, mainly hip and spine fractures. For treatment of osteoporosis there are two options, antiresorptive or osteoanabolic therapy. Teriparatide is an anabolic drug. It is the analogue of parathyroid hormone (PTH) and it consists of first 34 N-terminal amino acids (PTH 1-34). Teriparatide has different effect on bone, depending on its administration method. Intermittent administration of teriparatide has anabolic effect on bones, and on the other hand continuous exposure to teriparatide has catabolic effect on bones. Teriparatide affects mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), adipocyte-derives stem cells (ADSC), osteoblast precursors, mature osteoblasts, and T cells. MSCs are multipotent cells that can differentiate into a variety of cell types, depending on transcriptional factors, cytokines, and signaling pathways involved. Some of those are used as markers of MSC differentiation to osteoblasts, including RUNX2, ALP, COL1A1, OCN and OPN.
The aim of the study was to determine which mode of in vitro administration of teriparatide best stimulates osteogenic differentiation, which is characteristic for intermittent administration of teriparatide in vivo. We compared 6 different modes of administration in 6 different time points. We used quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to determine gene expressions of ALP, RUNX2, COL1A1, BMP2, OCN, PTH1R and reference gene GADPH.
We measured the highest ALP gene expression when cells were treated continuously (TPTD 24/7). There is no differences between modes of teriparatide treatment in RUNX2 and COL1A1 gene expressions. As expected, we measured lower OCN gene expression compared to control sample. There is the highest BMP2 gene expression on 14th day, when the MSC were treated continuously (TPTD 24/7). PTH1R gene has the bigest dinamic compared to other genes. We measured the highest gene expression on 21th day, when the MSC were incubated in osteogenic medium without teriparatide. Given the results from alizarin staining, we concluded that MSC differentiated into osteoblastic cells. The most intense staining of calcium deposits occurred in cells that were treated intermittently (TPTD 6 h) and in continuously (TPTD 24/7), which indicates that these two modes of teriparatide treatment showed the greatest success of osteogenic differentiation of MSC. Depending on our results, it is not possible to determine the best mode of administration of the drug. What we can say is that the biggest differences were observed in intermittent treatment with teriparatide fo 6 hours (TPTD 6 h) and in continuous treatment 24/7 (TPTD 24/7). It is necessary to carry out aditional experiments to determine which mode of administration of teriparatide is better.
|