Methods for identifying potential therapeutic agents for treatment of osteoporosis using mitogenic indices

The invention relates to standardized, primary osteoblast cell cultures from test persons with suspected osteoporosis, examined using differential diagnosis, their use in osteoporosis diagnostics, and in testing potential therapeutic agents for osteoporosis, and a method for diagnosing osteoporosis permitting a 95% reliable statement as to the presence of osteoporosis, and a method for testing potential osteoporosis therapeutic agents, by which an effective osteoporosis therapeutic agent can be determined for each individual case. A method of screening potential therapeutic substances that may be useful in the treatment of osteoporosis is provided herein utilizing primary osteoblast precursor cell cultures to determine the mitogenic effect of the tested agents. This method comprises preparation of the primary cultures from osteoporotic patients for the expression of several intracellular proteins in early and late osteoblast differentiation phases, expression of other proteins involved in matrix synthesis, and quantitative analysis of the cellular proliferation rate. The expression of such intracellular proteins and cell proliferation in the cultures derived from osteoporotic patients are quantitatively compared to primary osteoblast cell cultures from non-osteoporotic patients that are standardized for the same approximate age and sex.