Although parathyroid hormone (PTH) has the ability to stimulate bone growth in both rats and humans, its mechanism of action is not fully understood at the molecular level. An in vitro marker that reflects the in vivo anabolic actions of PTH would facilitate the discovery of small-molecule compounds that stimulate bone growth. We therefore compared the patterns of gene expression in three cell lines treated with PTH. The levels of c-fos, collagenase, interleukin-6 (IL-6), and collagen mRNA were determined by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in three osteoblast-like cell lines. The most responsive marker was c-fos, which was induced 5-10-fold after 1 h of PTH treatment in the UMR106-01 cell line. Because it is a critical early response gene in bone growth, we investigated the possibility of using c-fos stimulation as a method to screen for compounds that can stimulate bone formation. A highly sensitive, medium-throughput RT-PCR assay for c-fos mRNA expression was established using the Taqman™ Detection System (Perkin Elmer, Mississauga, Ontario). Cells were treated with a series of compounds to determine the specificity of c-fos stimulation. Of the compounds tested, only PTH, prostaglandin E2, 8-bromo-cAMP, and forskolin induced c-fos mRNA levels, indicating that this assay was specific for compounds that are known to induce cAMP and stimulate bone growth. These results indicate that a simple in vitro assay for c-fos may be a reliable method for the screening of compounds that stimulate bone growth in vivo.
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