SUN-263 In Vitro Modeling of Brain-Bone Communication: Factors Secreted from Immortalized Female Kisspeptin Neurons Modulate Gene Expression in Osteoblasts

Abstract

While the sex steroid hormone estrogen (E2) is essential for maximum reproductive fitness, circulating E2 is also involved in maintaining skeletal homeostasis in females. E2 in male and female animals has been shown to stimulate cancellous bone formation via activation of estrogen receptor alpha (ERα), and it was widely thought that this effect was mediated directly at the level of bone. A recent study, however, demonstrated a large increase in bone density in female mice in which ERα was deleted from specific neuroendocrine neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus, specifically those expressing kiss1, a population required for fertility and pubertal progression. Bone from transgenic Kiss1-cre X ERα floxed females showed higher osteoblast functioning, accompanied by increases in the expression of sp7 and runx2, positing the existence of a direct neural-bone regulatory axis that is altered by circulating E2 at the level of the brain (Herber et al., Nat Commun 2019).Our laboratory recently published a study demonstrating that GnRH and Kisspeptin, typically thought to act primarily within the neuroendocrine reproductive axis, are synthesized and secreted in an autocrine fashion by canine osteosarcoma cells in vitro, and that these neuropeptides can stimulate tumor cell proliferation (BMC Cancer 2019). Separately, our lab has also recently generated two immortalized Kiss1-expressing and –secreting cell lines, KTaR-1 (representative of female arcuate Kiss-1 neurons) and KTaV-3 cells (representative of female AVPV Kiss-1 neurons) (Endocrinology 2017). In the current study, we have combined these two in vitro models to explore if factors secreted by female ARC-derived KTaR-1 cells may affect multiple parameters of osteoblast function, including sp7 and runx2 expression (evaluated by qPCR), and ability to form bone matrix (evaluated by Alizarin Red assay). Preliminary results suggest that exposure canine osteosarcoma (COS) cells to conditioned media from KTaR-1 cells leads to increases in sp7 expression in an E2-dependent manner, such that 24h E2-deprivation of these neurons stimulates secretion of osteogenic factors. Additionally, media from both KTaR-1 and KTaV-3 cells stimulated Ca2+ production from cultured osteoblasts, as evaluated by Alizarin Red. We are continuing to explore these in vitro interactions using COS cells, as well as normal osteoblasts (cNOB) and immortalized cNOBs, and are evaluating media and exosomal proteomics to further characterize putative factors. While further study is required, these initial results suggest that our immortalized neuronal KP cell models may provide useful molecular tools to explore the regulation of this newly-proposed neural-bone axis.