Our story - Research news - In their bones
In their bones
December 1st, 2009
Professor Jack Martin has worked on understanding the way that cells of the bone communicate with each other for almost as long as his colleague Dr Natalie Sims has been alive. They originally met when Natalie joined the Bone, Joint and Cancer Unit, of which Jack was head, as a postdoc. At the end of 2009 the group complete 25 years of continuous NHMRC Program funding. They take the occasion of the renaming of the unit to The Bone Cell Biology and Disease Unit, to reflect on the progress that has been made at SVI in understanding communication pathways between bone cells.
Jack says:
“In the 35 years I have worked on bone, lots of exciting things have happened. Major highlights at SVI were our realisation that the osteoblast (bone forming) family of bone cells controlled the formation and activity of the cells that break bone down – the osteoclasts. That led to the identification, a little over 10 years ago, of the molecules responsible for this. Another major event was our discovery in 1987 of parathyroid hormone-related protein. Over some years, we showed how the bone attracts certain cancers – breast and prostate – to grow there as secondaries."
A major step forward for us came when we recruited Natalie from Yale in 2001. She brought with her great skill and experience in analyzing the skeleton after genetic changes were introduced; this allowed us to study the physiology of bone and the effects of disease – osteoporosis, cancer, arthritis – in ways not previously possible. Natalie’s expertise in this area is recognised world-wide. These capabilities were also a key factor in attracting Louise Purton and Carl Walkley to SVI to work on how bone affects the development of blood cells.
Furthermore, it has been enough to retain my interest at an advanced age. I feel privileged to be part of this exciting group of young people, and can sometimes help by remembering things that were done 40 years ago that are directly relevant to today’s work.
The change of the unit’s name doesn’t mean that what we do is changed – rather it’s a recognition of the central importance of bone as an organ, not only in diseases like cancer and arthritis, but also in blood diseases and even metabolic conditions such as diabetes and obesity.”
Natalie says:
“I grew up in the bone research field knowing that Jack and his team at SVI were the top laboratory in Australia. They were always the people who asked the most intimidating questions at conferences – at least they seemed very intimidating to a PhD student and junior post-doc! When I was trying to figure out where I should work after my period at Yale, SVI seemed the obvious choice.
The lab here had always done excellent cell biology, but almost nothing on the analysis of structural defects in bone that had been altered by genetic manipulation. This meant that when I arrived the lab didn’t have any of the equipment that I needed. I used to prepare my plastic specimens using a hand file and sandpaper from North Fitzroy Hardware, then I’d go over to the Pathology Department at the hospital late in the afternoon to use their equipment to cut the thin sections we needed for our analysis.
It wasn’t too long before we managed to get the funding for the right equipment though, and not long after that, we started making some exciting discoveries in collaboration with many groups across Melbourne. Some of this work forms the basis of what we’re doing now.
Research in the unit has gradually shifted from trying to understand how the cells of bone work, to trying to understand how they work within the context of the rest of the body. The key questions we’re looking at now ask “How do bone cells talk to each other?”; “How do bone cells talk to the cells of the marrow?”; “How do bone cells respond in joint stress and cancer?” and “How do bone cells influence other organs, including the kidney and the pancreas?”.
There’s always more questions to be answered, more experiments to be done, more data to be generated. And it’s seeing new data revealing something new about how the skeleton works that keeps me motivated.
I hope it will keep me interested for as long as it has fascinated Jack.”