[이뉴스투데이 수도권취재본부 권오경 기자] Recently, the research group of Professor Jae-beom Kim from the Department of Life Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, and the research group of Professor Jong-kyung Kim from POSTECH demonstrated that “invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT),” a type of immune cell found in adipose tissue, plays a key role in the process of replacing fat cells. I discovered that it can be done.
Professor Jaebeom Kim. [사진=서울대]
Obesity is a key risk factor that causes several metabolic diseases (diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, etc.) and causes huge socioeconomic losses worldwide (approximately $2 trillion, as of 2020).
Obesity causes an inflammatory response in adipose tissue and increases the percentage of large “bad fat cells”. The accumulation of such harmful fat cells causes various metabolic diseases such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular diseases.
Therefore, the self-protection process of removing bad fat cells and replacing them with new healthy fat cells can help reduce the inflammatory response in adipose tissue and safely store excess fat in obesity. However, nothing is known about how this self-protection process is regulated through “fat cell replacement”.
This study revealed that a specific subpopulation of iNKT cells within adipose tissue is newly generated in obesity and can selectively induce the death of large inflammatory adipocytes through its high apoptotic capacity.
On the other hand, other subpopulations of iNKT cells in adipose tissue have been found to be involved in the creation of new adipocytes by promoting the division of adipose tissue stem cells.
This study revealed the mechanism by which specific immune cells regulate the process of removing and replacing bad fat cells within adipose tissue, suggesting for the first time that these immune cells play an important role in maintaining healthy adipose tissue. cellular function opens a new chapter in overcoming obesity and in the development of treatments for metabolic diseases”.
The results of this research were published on December 21, 2023 in the online edition of ‘Nature Communications’, a leading international academic journal in the field of biology.
This study was conducted with the support of the Leader Researcher Support project of the Ministry of Science and ICT.
◆ 논문명: Unique subpopulations of adipose tissue-invariant natural killer T cells control adipocyte turnover in mice
◆ Lead authors: Jae-Beom Kim (co-corresponding author, Seoul National University), Sang-Moon Han (co-first author, Seoul National University)
2023-12-29 01:35:00
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