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A mechanobiological transduction model for bone remodelling

Bone remodelling is the bone’s ability to adapt itself to daily loading activity and metabolic factors governed by basic multicellular units (BMUs) composed of osteoclasts and osteoblasts. Osteoclasts are in charge of bone resorption, whereas osteoblasts proceed to bone formation. The resorption is a process that consists of degradation of the organic component of the bone material due to enzymatic activity by osteoclasts. Bone turnover also involves osteocytes which are considered as the transducting centre linking external load and metabolic factors with the BMU cells. In the literature, there exist two different ways of approaching the bone remodelling process. The first and the most mature one approaches bone remodelling from a purely phenomenological point of view based on mechanical behaviour (Hambli et al. 2009). The second approach deals with the fundamental biological reactions and the regulation of the BMU which occur in a unit volume (Lemaire et al. 2004). They are useful for understanding the real process that takes place, but do not consider macroscopic stimuli and do not transfer the effect of bone remodelling to a bigger scale. The aim of this work is to propose a novel set of coupled mechanobiological stimulus model that takes place after the osteocyte-transduction phase which will drive the bone remodelling process. Furthermore, this model will be used to update mechanical and geometrical properties of the element of bone considered (i.e. a finite element model of a numerical bone). First, this approach is more realistic and relevant than a simple mechanical stimulus, because it also includes biological information. Second it will permit a better and easier prediction of drug treatment’s effects, because of the establishment of some elemental–biological parameters in the model. 2. Methods