Immune cells have been found to kill “bad fat cells,” which are primarily responsible for obesity

Immune cells have been discovered that eliminate harmful fat cells that cause diabetes and other diseases in obese people. The expectation is that it could be used to overcome obesity and develop treatments for metabolic diseases.

Obesity causes various metabolic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The resulting socioeconomic losses amount to $2 trillion globally in 2020 alone.

In obese people it causes an inflammatory response in adipose tissue and increases the percentage of large “bad fat cells”. The accumulation of such harmful fat cells causes diabetes, hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular disease.

The adipose tissue in our body contains special immune cells that perform a self-protection function by removing bad fat cells and replacing them with new, healthy fat cells. A national research team has discovered the process by which the self-protection process is regulated through the replacement of fat cells.

Control of the process of replacement of adipocytes by iNKT cells of adipose tissue (Data = Seoul National University)

In an article recently published in the academic journal “Nature Communications”, the research team formed by Professor Jae-Beom Kim from the Department of Life Sciences at Seoul National University and Professor Jong-Kyung Kim from POSTECH revealed that “l ‘invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT), a type of immune cell in adipose tissue.’ plays a key role in the process of fat cell replacement.

iNKT cells have the characteristic of recognizing lipid antigens and inducing cytokine secretion or target cell death in various tissues of the body.

The researchers found that a specific subpopulation of iNKT cells in adipose tissue is newly generated in obesity, and that these cells have a high apoptotic capacity and can selectively induce the death of large inflammatory fat cells. It has also been revealed that other subpopulations of iNKT cells in adipose tissue promote the division of adipose tissue stem cells and participate in the creation of new healthy adipocytes.

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The research team identified the mechanism by which specific immune cells regulate the process of removing and replacing harmful fat cells in adipose tissue, demonstrating for the first time that these immune cells play an important role in maintaining the health of adipose tissue . The researchers explained that this has opened a new chapter in overcoming obesity and developing treatments for metabolic diseases.

This research was conducted with the support of the Leader Researcher Support project of the Ministry of Science and ICT. The title of the article is Adipose tissue unique invariant natural killer T cell subpopulations control adipocyte turnover in mice.

2023-12-29 05:26:05
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