Background: While autophagy is essential for stem cells’ self-renewal and differentiation, its effect on bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the interaction between autophagy and osteogenic differentiation using rapamycin (RAPA), a classical autophagy agonist with osteo-regulatory effects.
Conclusions: The BMSC’s basal autophagy level decreased over time during osteogenic differentiation. However, an appropriate RAPA concentration promoted BMSC osteogenic differentiation via autophagy activation.
another paper:
Inflammation produced by senescent osteocytes mediates age-related bone loss
Results: A total of nine potential drugs were predicted, with rapamycin ranking the highest. In cellular experiments, rapamycin reduced the senescence phenotype produced by the H2O2-stimulated osteocyte-like cell MLO-Y4.
Conclusion: With age, inflammatory pathways are activated in bone tissue, and signals that promote bone formation are inhibited. This study contributes to the understanding of the molecular changes that occur in bone tissue during age-related bone loss and provides evidence that rapamycin is a drug of potential clinical value for this disease. The therapeutic effects of the drug are to be further studied in animals.
Related Reading: Rapamycin Delays Age-related Osteoarthritis