Organizational and investigational aspects of bone banking in Belgium.

Our experience with the bone banking methodology that we have used over the last years is reported. The technical and investigational aspects of the procurement, storage and treatment of the donor bone and related tissues are presented. For different purposes, we have prepared sterile and nonsterile procured implants. Appropriate donor selection and sterility controls remain the two major concerns of bone banking activities

Discotic liquid crystals as electron carrier materials

A series of five new hexaalkylthiohexaazatriphenylenes 2a-e has been synthesized. Their thermotropic behaviour has been investigated and compared with the corresponding series of hexaalkylthiotriphenylenes 1a-e and hexaalkylthiohexaazatrinaphthylenes 3a-e. Unexpectedly, hexaalkylthiohexaazatriphenylenes 2a-e, hexaalkylthiotriphenylenes 1d-e and hexaalkylthiohexaazatrinaphthylenes 3e, do not form columnar liquid crystalline mesophases.SCOPUS: cp.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Bone overgrowth-associated mutations in LRP4 impair sclerostin-facilitator function.

Abstract Humans lacking sclerostin display progressive bone overgrowth due to increased bone formation. While it is well established that sclerostin is an osteocyte secreted bone formation inhibitor, the underlying molecular mechanisms are not fully elucidated. We identified in Tandem affinity purification proteomics screens LRP4 (low density lipoprotein-related protein 4) as a sclerostin interaction partner. Biochemical assays with recombinant proteins confirmed that sclerostin LRP4 interaction is direct. Interestingly, in vitro overexpression and RNAi mediated knockdown experiments revealed that LRP4 specifically facilitates the previously described inhibitory action of sclerostin on Wnt1/beta-catenin signaling. We found the extracellular beta-propeller structured domain of LRP4 to be required for this sclerostin-facilitator activity. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated that LRP4 protein is present in human and rodent osteoblasts and osteocytes both presumed target cells of sclerostin action. Silencing of LRP4 by lentiviral-mediated shRNA delivery blocked sclerostin-inhibitory action on in vitro bone mineralization. Notably, we identified two mutations in LRP4 (R1170W, W1186S) in patients suffering from bone overgrowth. We found that these mutations impair LRP4 interaction with sclerostin and its concomitant sclerostin-facilitator effect. Together these data indicate that the interaction of sclerostin with LRP4 is required to mediate sclerostin inhibitory function on bone formation, thus identifying a novel role for LRP4 in bone