Primary murine bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC) were differentiated to osteogenic cells using standard osteogenic medium in DMEM (Invitrogen, Darmstadt, Germany) for 7 days.(8 (link),12 (link)–14 (link)) Before treatment, cells were switched to DMEM containing 1% FCS overnight and then treated with 1 μg/mL LPS (Sigma-Aldrich) or 50 ng/mL TNF-α (R&D Systems, Frankfurt, Germany) for 48 hours. In some experiments, BMSC were isolated from TLR2/4 KO mice (C57BL/6 backgroud). To block TNF-α actions, cells were pretreated for 2 hours with 1 μg/mL of soluble TNF receptors (TNFR1 and TNFR2, both from R&D Systems).