Clarifying how folic acid prevents the onset of cleft palate

Naoki YOSHIDA, Toshihiro INUBUSHI, Takumi HIROSE, Gozo AOYAMA, Hiroshi KUROSAKA, Takashi YAMASHIRO
Department of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, Graduate School of Dentistry

Cleft palate is a multifactorial genetic disorder caused by various environmental and genetic factors, and the pathogenesis of the condition is still poorly understood. On the other hand, folic acid has been suggested to prevent the onset of cleft palate, but the scientific evidence for this has not been fully demonstrated.
A research team lead by Takashi YAMASHIRO and Toshihiro INUBUSHI, the department of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, Graduate School of Dentistry, clarified that activation of Stat3 signaling and its associated suppression of p63 are important for palatal process fusion and that dysfunction of this signaling is a factor in palatal process fusion failure by model mouse.Furthermore, it was shown that folic acid contributes to the resolution of palatine process fusion defects by suppressing p63 through Stat3 activation.
The results of this research are expected to contribute to more efficient individualized prevention of cleft palate with folic acid by clarifying genetic and environmental factors that affect the regulation of p63 expression in the fusion of the palatine process.

The article was published on 17 October, 2023 in Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1242/dmm.050085