Neale Weitzmann and George Beck have been publishing a series of papers describing how silica nanoparticles can increase bone mineral density in animals. Their findings could someday form the basis for a treatment for osteoporosis.
In 2012, we posted an article and video on this topic. We wanted to call attention to a few of the team’s recent papers, one of which probes the mechanism for a remarkable phenomenon: how can very fine silica particles stimulate bone formation?
The particles’ properties seem to depend on their size: 50 nanometers wide – smaller than a HIV or influenza vision. In a 2014 ACS Nano paper, Beck, Weitzmann and postdoc Shin-Woo Ha show that the particles interact with particular proteins involved in the process of autophagy, a process of “self digestion†induced by stress.
“These studies suggest that it is not the material per se that stimulates autophagy but rather size or shape,†they write.
Other papers:
2015 Nanomedicine, silica nanoparticles can reverse bone loss in aged mice
2014 Toxicology In Vitro, “little toxicity in any cell type analyzedâ€
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