South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea selected Lee Yoon-sil (이윤실), a professor at Seoul National University Graduate School of Dentistry, as the May winner of the Korea Science and Technology Award, the ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry and the foundation selected Lee for securing clues to solving bone diseases that are rapidly increasing in an era of ageing, and for contributing to improving public health, as part of Family Month.

Most existing drugs for bone disease treat patients by preventing bone loss. In rare cases, there are concerns about side effects with long-term use. That makes a drug holiday necessary after a certain period of treatment. Lee presented a new mitochondria-based treatment method that restores damaged bone while reducing these side effects and treatment gaps.

To prove that mitochondria play a role in promoting bone formation in osteoblasts, Lee developed genetically modified mice in which green fluorescent protein is expressed only in osteoblast mitochondria. Using them, she observed in real time that when osteoblasts are activated, mitochondria change into a donut shape and are then secreted outside the cell in the form of small vesicles.

She confirmed that transplanting mitochondria secreted by osteoblasts into areas of bone defects promoted differentiation of osteoprogenitor cells and sped up bone regeneration. This demonstrated that mitochondria play an important role as a core promoter that transmits intercellular signals and induces tissue regeneration.

Lee improved the precision and reproducibility of bone regeneration research by precisely extracting only osteoblasts from the bones of genetically modified mice. She also secured foundational technology in the field by registering 6 patents in South Korea and the United States related to mitochondria-based therapeutic technology and filing 11 more.

Lee produced the results with support from the ministry's Mid-career Research Program and Basic Research Laboratory program. The research was selected as the cover paper of the February 2023 issue of Cell Metabolism, an international journal in the field of metabolic biology.

Lee said, "Through this research, I ultimately want to present a new approach to treating musculoskeletal diseases." She added, "My goal is to open an era in which treatments that restore damaged tissue become widespread, beyond simply slowing the progression of disease."