GENEVA, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Swiss researchers have revealed a new cell type that resides in the body's fat depots where it can actively suppress fat cell formation, which would open entirely new avenues to combat obesity and related diseases such as diabetes, according to a press release issued by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) on Wednesday.
Fat cells are at the center of nutritional and metabolic balance, and the formation of mature fat cells from their precursor cells has been linked to obesity and related health problems such as cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes.
As fat tissue contains a large number of stromal cells that are difficult to distinguish using traditional approaches such as genetic labeling, it's quite challenging to determine the identity and molecular properties of fat cell precursors.
In a recent study published in Nature, EPFL scientists have used a high-resolution technique called "single cell transcriptomics" to characterize, for the first time, the different types of stromal cells that reside within mature fat depots.
The scientists first identified several stromal cell subpopulations in the fat tissue of mice, then isolated these subpopulations and studied their cellular behavior. Unexpectedly, they found that one of these subpopulations not only fails to differentiate into fat cells, it also actively suppresses the formation of other fact precursor cells through a secretory mechanism.
The researchers therefore named this novel subpopulation "Aregs" for "adipogenesis-regulatory cells." Then they followed up by examining human fat, and discovered the presence of an analogous adipogenesis-suppressing cell population.
These findings provide the hope that Aregs, or their mechanism of action, could be harnessed to modulate the plasticity of human adipose tissue. In the long run, this could help control obesity and insulin sensitivity and thus to treat metabolic diseases including type-2 diabetes.
The researchers said that controlling fat cell formation is important not only for improving metabolic health, but also for slowing aging, since several tissues, such as bone marrow and muscle, accumulate fat cells over time, which negatively affects their function. The discovery has therefore widespread biomedical implications.
