Postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP) is a common systemic skeletal disease characterized by reduced bone mass and microarchitecture deterioration. Although differentially expressed SOX5 has been found in bone marrow from ovariectomized mice, its role in osteogenic differentiation in human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) from bone marrow in PMOP remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the biological function of SOX5 and explore its molecular mechanism in hMSCs from patients with PMOP. Our findings showed that the mRNA and protein expression levels of SOX5 were upregulated in hMSCs isolated from bone marrow samples of PMOP patients. We also found that SOX5 overexpression decreased the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and the gene expression of osteoblast markers including Collagen I, Runx2 and Osterix, which were increased by SOX5 knockdown using RNA interference. Furthermore, TNF-α notably upregulated the SOX5 mRNA expression level, and SOX5 knockdown reversed the effect of TNF-α on osteogenic differentiation of hMSCs. In addition, SOX5 overexpression increased Kruppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) gene expression, which was decreased by SOX5 silencing. KLF4 knockdown abrogated the suppressive effect of SOX5 overexpression on osteogenic differentiation of hMSCs. Taken together, our results indicated that TNF-α-induced SOX5 upregulation inhibited osteogenic differentiation of hMSCs through KLF4 signal pathway, suggesting that SOX5 might be a novel therapeutic target for PMOP treatment.
Keywords: KLF4; SOX5; human mesenchymal stem cells; osteogenic differentiation; postmenopausal osteoporosis.