New BMPs for bone healing

Chicago, Illinois -

One of the first areas of medicine in which regenerative technologies have been applied is the acceleration of bone healing. Although most bones heal naturally, in certain situations (both fracture and host specific) healing does not occur properly.

The bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) are a family of growth factors that play important roles in embryogenesis, as well as various functions in the adult. BMPs control differentiation of adult stem cells, as well as can induce differentiation of cancer cells.

Currently, there are two BMPs that are clinically used for acceleration of bone healing. These are BMP-2 and BMP-7.

A recent paper (Luu et al. Distinct roles of bone morphogenetic proteins in osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells. J Orthop Res. 2008, Feb 10) assessed all 16 BMPs for ability to induce mesenchymal stem cell differentiation into bone cells. The investigators found that BMP 2 and 7 induce such differentiation, which is to be expected based on the in vivo activity of these proteins. However, the investigators noticed that BMP 6 and BMP9 actually had the highest osteo-differentiation activity amongst all the BMPs.

This work suggests that various other BMPs besides 2 and 7 may be useful for therapeutic purposes.

Currently one of the main companies working in the area of clinically developing BMPs is Curis.