Regulation of osteoclastogenesis by transcriptional repressor Blimp1 via epigenetic regulation

破骨细胞是独特的骨吸收细胞，因此是治疗骨质疏松症等骨病的治疗靶点。我们发现B淋巴细胞诱导成熟蛋白1(Blimp1)是破骨细胞发生所必需的转录抑制因子。尽管Blimp1缺失突变小鼠是胚胎致死的，但在成年阶段通过Cre/loxP系统进行Blimp1条件性敲除并没有促进小鼠的致死性不良反应，但随着骨量的增加，破骨细胞的形成受到显著抑制。因此，Blimp1被认为是治疗骨质疏松症等骨骼疾病的靶点(J Biol Chem 2012)。

Osteoclasts are unique bone resorbing cells, and thus are therapeutic targets to treat bone diseases such as osteoporosis. We found that B lymphocyte induced maturation protein 1 (Blimp1), a transcriptional repressor, was required for osteoclastogenesis. Although Blimp1-null mutant mice are embryonic lethal, Blimp1 conditional knockout at an adult stage by a Cre/loxP system did not promote lethal adverse effects in mice, while resulted in significant inhibition of osteoclast formation with increased bone mass. Thus, Blimp1 was considered as a therapeutic target to treat skeletal diseases such as osteoporosis (J Biol Chem 2012).