BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Oncostatin's LIFR sentence

January 21, 2010 8:00 AM UTC

A key challenge in developing osteoporosis therapies that actually promote bone growth-most marketed drugs stop bone loss-is uncoupling the tightly related processes of bone formation and resorption. Now, a group of Australian researchers has found a ligand, oncostatin M, that can elicit bone formation when it binds to a receptor called LIFR or bone resorption when it binds to another receptor called OSMR.1

The challenge will be to develop small molecules that are selective enough to agonize the interaction between oncostatin M (OSM) and leukemia inhibitory factor receptor-a (LIFR; CD118) without affecting binding between OSM and oncostatin M receptor (OSMR)...