Cellular biology and biochemical mechanism of bone resorption. A review of recent developments on the formation, activation, and mode of action of osteoclasts.

The newest knowledge on the osteoclast allows us to consider bone resorption in a global perspective, as the resultant of three successive steps that may each be individually regulated by physiopathologic or pharmacologic agents. The first involves the formation of osteoclast progenitors in hematopoietic tissues followed by their vascular dissemination and the generation of resting preosteoclasts and osteoclasts in bone. The second consists in the activation of osteoclasts at the contact of mineralized bone. Osteoblasts appear to control this step by exposing the mineral to osteoclasts and preosteoclasts and/or by releasing a soluble factor that activates these cells. In a third step, activated osteoclasts resorb both the mineral and the organic of mineralized bone through the action of agents that they secrete in the segregated zone underlying their ruffled border. The mineral appears to be solubilized by hydrogen ions secreted by an ATP-driven proton pump located at that border and fed by protons generated from CO2 by carbonic anhydrase. The removal of organic matrix, which could be prepared by osteoblast collagenase at the level of nonmineralized bone surfaces, appears dependent on acid proteinases, particularly cysteine-proteinases, secreted, together with other lysosomal enzymes, in the acid microenvironment of the resorption zone.