One of the promising approaches for osteoporosis treatment is bone regeneration. in this case, several therapeutic options can be considered, including: osteogenic differentiation of stem cells and expansion and maturation of osteoblasts. many epigenetic mechanisms are involved in modulation of bone regeneration, among them micrornas (mirs) have been taken into great consideration.
Methods
The pubmed and web of science, were searched for relevant studies published between 2015-2017.
Results
Mirs are small non-coding rnas that exert fundamental functions on multiple physiological and pathological processes as they target messenger rnas for degradation or inhibit translation. increasing number of mirs have been identified to play critical roles in bone remodeling which their expression is up/down regulated during osteogenesis, regulate osteoblast and osteoclast differentiation and function or participate in regulation of osteo-related signaling pathways. for example, mir-2861 and mir-335-5p promote osteoblast differentiation through activating of histone deactylase-5 or wnt signaling. runx2 has been confirmed as a direct target of mir-335. mir-20a increases osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells through upregulating the bmp/runx2 pathway. mir-27 mediates osteoblast differentiation by inhibiting oncogene expression and activating wnt signaling which in turn activates mir-29a. other mirs; such as mir-21-5p, mir-31-5p, mir-133a-3p, hsa-mir-422a, hsa-mir-148a-3p, mir-183-5p, mir-214-3p, mir-223-3p, mir-9718, mir-138, mir-30, mir-542-3p, mir-34, mir-223, mir-194, mir-637, mir106a, mir-17-5p and mir-204 inhibitory or promote osteoclast formation.
Conclusion
Better understanding of how mirs participate in bone regeneration will provide new targets for osteoporosis treatment and preliminary applications of mirs show promising evidences to serve as therapeutic targets for osteoporosis.
Keywords
Bone regeneration, micrornas, differentiation, osteoblast, osteoclast
