Effect of BMP-9 and its derived peptide on the differentiation of human white preadipocytes

Abstract

Several studies have shown that bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) can influence adipogenic and osteogenic cell lineages. We have shown that a peptide derived from BMP-9 (pBMP-9) at 400 ng/ml inhibits the proliferation of preosteoblasts and induces differentiation. We have now determined the effects of pBMP-9 (400 ng/ml) and equimolar concentrations of BMP-2 (100 ng/ml), BMP-9 (84.6 ng/ml) and pBMP-9 (9.04 ng/ml) on human white preadipocytes (HWP). pBMP-9 dose dependently reduced the proliferation of HWP without affecting the number of apoptotic cells. Incubation of the cells for 1 h with BMP-2, BMP-9 or pBMP-9 activated the Smad1/5/8 pathway, while incubation for 7 days in adipocyte differentiation (AD) serum-free medium containing ciglitazone and equimolar concentrations of BMP-2, BMP-9 or pBMP-9 enhanced the levels of mRNA of the adipogenic markers aP2 and adipoQ and increased the number of lipid vesicles. Thus, pBMP-9, like BMP-9, can increase the AD of HWP in AD serum-free medium.

Keywords::

• Bone morphogenetic protein
• peptide
• proliferation
• differentiation
• Smad pathway
• lipid accumulation

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Owen Parkes for editing the English text and Véronique Normand and Mélissa Tremblay for the technical assistance.

Declaration of interest: This research was supported through a Canada Research Chair in Cell-Biomaterial Biohybrid Systems and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada program. Eric Bergeron was supported by a Fonds de la recherche en sante' du Que'bec fellowship. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.