Section B Project B01

Defining the regulation and role of bone marrow adipocytes during inflammatory bone loss

Inflammation is considered to suppress mesenchymal stem cell differentiation into various lineages and support tissue infiltration with neutrophils. Recent work shows that arthritis leads to a decrease of bone marrow adipocytes (BMAd) and osteoblasts, while neutrophils accumulate (Furesi, et al., 2021). Data suggest that this bone-catabolic niche might be mediated by the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-17. This project aims to investigate how inflammation leads to the depletion of BMAd and osteoblasts, and how these changes affect inflammatory bone loss. Moreover, we will investigate the interactions of neutrophils with osteoblasts and BMAd and assess how they adapt their metabolic program to inflammatory cues (such as IL-17) using metabolomics. The long-term goal of this project is to understand how various cell types compete for nutrients in the bone marrow microenvironment under chronic inflammatory conditions and how depriving bone cells of nutrients potentially contributes to bone loss.