BME Seminar

Age-related and pathological fractures continue to be a significant public health issue that affects more than 10 million Americans annually, and they cause substantial mortalities, morbidities, and economic costs. Currently, the risk of fracture is clinically assessed by bone mineral density (BMD), but BMD does not discriminate fracture risk in many patient populations, suggesting that BMD alone is not sufficient to account for fracture risk.  Bone quality, a culmination of factors including micro-architecture, microdamage accumulation, collagen crosslinking, and bone matrix material properties, have been shown to contribute significantly to the fracture of bone.  The bone quality in turn is regulated by a number of biological mechanisms, which require precise synergy amongst the cellular activity, the regulation of growth factors, and responsiveness to the mechanical environment of bone.  The furthered understanding of these mechanisms relating to fracture will aid in improving existing clinical diagnosis of bone fragility as well as provide new insights to the development of treatments and drug therapies.  This talk will focus on recent findings on the contributions of bone quality towards bone fragility, and how its regulatory mechanisms change with aging, disease, and drug treatments. 

Biographical Information: Simon Tang, PhD.