Osteoimmunology and Bone Biology

Dear Colleagues,

Traditionally, osteoimmunology investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying bone destruction associated with inflammatory diseases and focused primarily on the role of osteoclasts in bone homeostasis. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that other pathologic conditions and genetic deficiencies in immunomodulatory molecules also elicit skeletal phenotypes. The advent of OMIC approaches has also revealed that the immune and bone systems share many molecules, including cytokines, chemokines, transcription factors, and signaling molecules and that bone cells reciprocally regulate immune cells and hematopoiesis. Here, we invite the submission of new studies that explore the role of immune cells and immune-cell-derived factors that control, regulate, or influence the function of osteoblasts, osteoclasts, and osteocytes. Similarly, we seek studies where defects in molecules expressed primarily in skeletal cells, or alleles associated with skeletal phenotypes, reciprocally affect the development, persistence, or behavior of immune cells in the bone marrow, or systemically.

Dr. Gabriela Loots
Dr. Jennifer O. Manilay
Topic Editors