You probably think of your bones as providing structure and support to your body and protecting your organs, but they have many other functions as well. The soft spongy area inside most bones, called the bone marrow, produces blood cells and stores energy in the form of fat and therefore plays an important role in bone health. The fat cells found in the bone marrow (bone marrow adipocytes) are very different from fat cells found in other parts of the body. Bone marrow adipocytes are also more difficult to study because they are found in small compartments inside of bones. SPARC program awardee Dr. Erica Scheller and her research team published a study in the journal Bone with some of the most detailed images ever acquired of bone marrow adipocytes. The images show that the bone marrow adipocytes interact with other components of their environment such as blood- and bone-forming cells and blood vessels. Of special interest to the SPARC program, a subset of the adipocytes were found to contact nerve cells. The results indicate that bone marrow adipocytes could send signaling molecules to nearby blood- and bone-forming cells and that nerves may coordinate the interactions between bone marrow adipocytes and these cells. This indicates that it could someday be possible to control or modulate bone formation and other bone processes by electrical stimulation of specific nerves. This could potentially lead to new treatments for conditions such as bone fragility, which occur more frequently in groups like the elderly and those with diabetes.

Reference: Characterization of the bone marrow adipocyte niche with three-dimensional electron microscopy. Robles, H, Park, S, Joens, MS, Fitzpatrick, JAJ, Craft, CS, and Scheller, E. Jan 2018. Bone. Doi: 10.1016/j.bone.2018.01.020.

Click on the image to view a video of bone marrow innervation in Bone: