Dimethyloxaloylglycine increases bone repair capacity of adipose-derived stem cells in the treatment of osteonecrosis of the femoral head

Zhu, Zhen-Hong; Song, Wen-Qi; Zhang, Chang-Qing; Yin, Ji-Min

DMOG is a small molecular drug, which is able to stabilize the expression of HIF-1α in cells (21) . At normal oxygen tension, HIF-1α is modified by oxygen dependent prolyl hydroxylases, resulting in rapid degradation through the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (22) . Under hypoxic conditions, prolyl hydroxylase activity decreases and HIF-1α is stabilized (39) . DMOG is able to inhibit prolyl hydroxylase activity at normal oxygen tension, thus leading to HIF-1α overexpression in cells. DMOG has been used to treat ischemic skeletal muscles, middle cerebral artery occlusion and ischemic myocardial injury, and all resulted in good outcomes in previous experiments (40) (41) (42) . Our previous study showed that DMOG could significantly enhance VEGF production in ASCs and improved the osteogenic differentiation potential of ASCs in vitro by stabilizing the expression of HIF-1α in ASCs, and DMOG-treated ASCs had an increased bone healing capacity and promoted local revascularization in critical defects (22) . In the present study, we investigated the efficacy of implanting DMOG-treated ASCs to treat early-stage corticosteroid-induced ONFH.