The research, conducted by a team of scientists led by biochemist Hector F. DeLuca at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was reported this week (Sept. 30) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a leading scientific journal.
"We've got a compound that is very selective for bone," says DeLuca. "It is very effective in animals," increasing bone density significantly in rats with a condition that mimics human osteoporosis, and can be used in the lab to grow bone in culture.
The research, conducted by DeLuca, Nirupama K. Shevde, Lori A. Plum, Margaret Claggett-Dame, Hironori Yamamoto and J. Wesley Pike, describes the effects of a potent Vitamin D analog known in scientific shorthand as 2MD. Its synthesis by the Wisconsin group, and studies of its effects in the lab and in animals, suggests the potential for developing a class of drugs that could effectively reverse bone loss in humans suffering from osteoporosis, a disease characterized by diminished bone density and, ultimately, brittle, fracture-prone bones.
"From where I sit, this is the most promising vitamin D compound I've seen," says DeLuca, an international authority on vitamin D and its chemistry.
But he stressed that while the new compound posts astonishing results when used in experimental animals, it has yet to be tested in humans and it will likely be several years at best before a drug reaches the market.
"There's nothing like it on the market now. We think it could become a major actor, but we haven't done any experiments in people," he says.
The compound could become an important alternative to hormone replacement therapy, one of whose benefits was preve
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Contact: Hector F. DeLuca
deluca@biochem.wisc.edu
608-262-3026
University of Wisconsin-Madison
30-Sep-2002