On 28 February we were delighted to host Professor Mone Zaidi who gave a talk on ‘New Roles for Old Molecules’ in the Blakemore Lecture Theatre here at DPAG.
Over his illustrious career Professor Zaidi has made ground-breaking discoveries on mechanisms of skeletal homeostasis in health and disease. These studies, spanning over 30 years, included the first description of calcium sensing in the osteoclast and the discovery that locally released nitric oxide acts to suppress bone cells. In 2003, Zaidi’s group published the first evidence for a pituitary–bone axis, a breakthrough in physiology in which pituitary hormones could affect the skeleton directly.
In two recent ground-breaking papers in Nature, he found that inhibiting FSH not only increased bone mass, but also reduced body fat and prevented neurodegeneration - in essence, laying a firm foundation for a single anti-FSH agent to treat osteoporosis, obesity and Alzheimer’s disease.