Potential therapeutic use of relaxin in accelerating closure of cranial bone defects in mice

Bone fractures are associated with considerable morbidity and increased mortality. A major limitation to healing is lack of bone blood flow, which is impaired by physical disruption of intraskeletal and/or periosteal vasculature by the fracture. Thus, pharmacological interventions are needed to improve osseous blood flow, thereby accelerating bone fracture closure. Relaxin is secreted by the ovary and circulates in rodents and humans during pregnancy. Because relaxin might benefit bone fracture healing by stimulating angiogenesis, vasculogenesis (and potentially osteogenesis) through mobilization and activation of bone marrow progenitor cells, and by increasing blood flow via vasodilation, we investigated whether relaxin administration would accelerate closure of a calvarial defect in mice. Whether administered systemically by osmotic pump or locally by collagen scaffolds for ~2 week period after lesioning, relaxin did not accelerate bone healing. Despite implementing relaxin doses that reached plasma concentrations spanning the physiological to supraphysiological range, testing the closure of two different sizes of calvarial lesions, allowing for different intervals of time from instigation of cranial lesion to euthanasia, and investigating mice of different ages, we did not observe a significant benefit of relaxin in bone lesion healing. Nor did we observe stimulation of blood vessel formation in the bone lesion by the hormone. An incidental finding was that relaxin appeared to enhance trabecular bone growth in an uninjured control bone (femur). Although the results of this study were not supportive of a therapeutic benefit for relaxin on calvarial defect closure, future investigation is needed employing different animal species and experimental models of bone fracture.