Join us for an insightful lecture presented by Dr. Masayuki Tsukasaki, DDS, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry at Showa University School of Dentistry in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Tsukasaki, a renowned researcher in osteoimmunology, will delve into the molecular mechanisms of bone pathologies, including cancer bone invasion, periodontitis, vascular calcification, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Drawing on his extensive research in osteoclast biology and the RANKL/RANK/OPG system, Dr. Tsukasaki will share groundbreaking findings from his work published in Nature Communications (2018, 2022), Nature Reviews Immunology (2019), Cell Reports (2020), and Nature Metabolism (2020). His research explores the periosteum, a tissue long recognized for its role in bone formation and fracture repair, and its surprising involvement in postnatal skeletal growth.

In this lecture, Dr. Tsukasaki will introduce his research team's discovery of the periosteal reaction, a process that not only responds to infection, injury, and malignancy but also acts as a protective mechanism against cancer invasion into bone. Their research reveals that periosteal stromal cells produce the protease inhibitor Timp1, which inactivates matrix-degrading proteases and thickens the periosteum, physically blocking cancer from invading bone. This discovery represents a novel aspect of anti-tumor defense mediated by stromal cells, expanding the understanding of tumor-host interactions.