Free fatty acids (FFAs), elevated in metabolic syndrome and diabetes, play a crucial role in the development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) counteracts many aspects of FFA-induced vascular pathology. Although vascular calcification is invariably associated with atherosclerosis, the mechanisms involved are not completely elucidated. In this study, we t...

We have previously demonstrated that glutamate (Glu) suppresses cellular proliferation toward self-renewal through a mechanism associated with the depletion of intracellular GSH after promoting the retrograde operation of the bidirectional cystine/Glu antiporter in undifferentiated osteoblastic MC3T3-E1 cells. In this study, we investigated the expression profile of the xCT subunit of the antip...

OBJECTIVE Vascular calcification is a common pathobiological process which occurs among the elder population and in patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease. Osteoprotegerin, a secreted glycoprotein that regulates bone mass, has recently emerged as an important regulator of the development of vascular calcification. However, the mechanism is not fully understood. The purpose of this st...

Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta), one of the most abundant cytokines in bone matrix, has positive and negative effects on bone formation, although the molecular mechanisms of these effects are not fully understood. Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), members of the TGF-beta superfamily, induce bone formation in vitro and in vivo. Here, we show that osteoblastic differentiation of mous...

Based on the analysis of a loss-of-function model, we recently showed that ATF4 regulates osteoblast terminal differentiation and function and is implicated in the pathophysiology of Coffin-Lowry syndrome. That study, however, did not address whether forced expression of Atf4 in non-osteoblastic cells would lead to osteoblast-specific gene expression, one of the most important features of a cel...

objective: evaluating the effects of p-benzoquinone and hydroquinone on the runx2 expression and osteoblastic differentiation of human marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (mscs). materials and methods: bone marrow mscs obtained by cultivating marrow mononuclear cells, were exposed to 10μm of either p-benzoquinone or hydroquinone. following chemical treatment, runx2 gene expression was assess...

OBJECTIVE Cardiac valvular endothelium is unique in its ability to undergo endothelial-to-mesenchymal transformation, a differentiation process that is essential for valve development and has been proposed as mechanism for replenishing the interstitial cells of mature valves. We hypothesized that the valvular endothelium contains endothelial cells that are direct precursors to osteoblastic valv...

Canonical Wnt signaling is critical for the control of osteoblast differentiation in human mesenchymal stem cells. MicroRNAs (miRs) are essential regulators of cell differentiation by post‑transcriptional regulation of target gene expression. The aim of the present study was to investigate the molecular mechanism by which miR‑142‑3p promotes osteoblastic differentiation using the human fetal os...