bone repair

Lovastatin, a drug used to lower cholesterol and help prevent cardiovascular disease, has been shown to improve bone healing in an animal model of neurofibromatosis type 1.

The research, reported today in the open access journal BMC Medicine, will be of great interest to NF1 patients and their physicians.

Enzyme induces adult stem cells to grow bone. Until now it has been difficult to induce adult human stem cells to produce bone, e.g. in order to repair bone tissue.

Researchers have just shown that if the enzyme PKA is previously activated in the stem cells in the lab, following implantation this results in substantial bone formation.

This opens up new ways of repairing bone tissue using cell material from the patient.