„ZEIT FÜR FORSCHUNG“ – NRW research professorship for Prof. Tobiasch

Professor Tobiasch’s research group addresses issues related to bone regeneration and reconstruction. Demographic change in the population has meant that musculoskeletal disorders are now the leading cause of upper and lower body mobility impairment.

One such disease is osteoporosis. According to the World Health Organization, it is one of the ten major diseases of an aging population. The illness is characterized by a reduction in bone density resulting in a sharp increase in susceptibility to fracture that can affect the whole skeleton. This is caused by an imbalance in the tightly regulated bone metabolism. Bone tissue is constantly built up and simultaneously degraded. In this disease, bone resorption is greater than bone formation. As well as causing considerable side effects, current medication for osteoporosis also has the disadvantage of disrupting the interplay between osteoclasts (bone-resorbing cells) and osteoblasts (bone-forming cells). For this reason, finding new treatment strategies with different target molecules are of major interest.

This will therefore be the starting point for Professor Tobiasch’s project: new cathepsin K inhibitors synthesized by Professor Michael Gütschow at the University of Bonn will be investigated in terms of their influence on bone metabolism. Mesenchymal stem cells will be differentiated into osteoblast-like cells using established protocols, and unfractionated leucocytes or macrophages will be differentiated into osteoclasts. The main characteristics of these targets cells will be defined and the influence of the novel cathepsin K inhibitors on these cells will also be evaluated, as will their effect on isolated cells from patients with osteoporosis.

This will allow the group to determine the influence of these potential drugs on the molecular pathogenesis of osteoporosis and to obtain initial data on their efficacy.