Researchers have discovered that switching off a white fat cell protein could open doors for novel weight loss treatments.
They specifically discovered a way to change white fat cells to beige fat cells, which have the capacity to burn calories.
Ordinary Fat Cells Burning Calories
The efforts done by researchers from UC San Francisco could lead to the development of weight loss drugs and could shed light on why some clinical trials on therapies that are related did not see any success.
The discovery was documented in the "White adipocytes in subcutaneous fat depots require KLF15 for maintenance in preclinical models" study.
Previously, researchers believed that in order to create beige fat, efforts needed to begin with stem cells. However, the new study revealed that typical white fat cells could be transformed into beige fat through the limitation of protein production.
Senior author Brian Feldman, MD, PhD, the Walter L. Miller, MD Distinguished Professor in Pediatric Endocrinology, noted that several people thought that such a method would not work. Though the bar was not as high as the researchers thought it would be, they were able to show that the method actually works.
White Fat Cells Turned to Calorie Burners
For several mammals, fat cells come in three "shades" of brown, white, and beige.
Brown fat cells typically burn energy for heat generation, while white fat cells keep energy reserves in the body. The former plays a role when it comes to body temperature regulation.
Beige fat cells boast such combined characteristics. They are also dispersed in deposits of white fat, and they also burn energy like that of brown cells.
In the past, scientists could only transform white cells into beige cells with the use of stem cells. However, due to the scarcity of stem cells, Feldman was able to come up with a method to switch the white fat cells to beige fat cells.
As part of the study, the authors examined a protein called LKF-15 and its role in mice. This protein is known to affect fat cell function and metabolism.
Researchers discovered that the protein was less abundant in white fat cells compared to beige and brown ones. When the author bred mice that had white fat cells that lacked the protein, the mice converted the white fat cells to beige.
This showed that when a certain protein was absent, beige fat cells were the default.
The scientists then examined how the protein exerted such an influence. Upon culturing human fat cells, they discovered that the protein plays a role in controlling the abundance of the Adrb1 receptor, which plays a role in energy balance.
While scientists have known that the simulation of a related receptor known as Adrb3 led to weight loss in mice, clinical drug trials among humans focusing on the receptor have yielded disappointing outcomes.
Feldman notes that a novel drug that aims for the Adrb1 receptor could work and may result in great advantages in novel and injectable weight-loss drugs.
While the study on how ordinary cells could burn calories is far from the finish line, it is clear that such discoveries could play a role in obesity treatment.
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