Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in collaboration with scientists from the University of California have identified a natural molecular path that allows cells to burn calories in the form of heat rather than storing them in fat form. A discovery that could offer new hope to treat and prevent obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders linked to obesity, including cancer.
Brunette fat vs white fat
Schematically, the body can store adipocytes, or fat cells, in two ways: within the white adipose tissue, where they remain stored, or in the adipose brown tissue, where lipids are degraded. The brown color is linked to the large number of mitochondria contained in this type of fabric, the mitochondria being the energy power plants of the cell. Normally, mitochondria normally transform glucose into ATP which provides the energy necessary for the chemical reactions of metabolism. But in brown fat cells, glucose is consumed without ATP formation, but by producing heat, a process known as thermogenesis.
The animals that hibernate, store most of their fats in the form of brown adipose tissue to be able to cross winter without being cold. But in humans, brown fat reserves are very low, apart from the newborn, in which it aims to protect it from low temperatures.
One of the challenges of obesity research is to better understand this thermogenesis mechanism for if possible, transform white fat into brown fat, or at least burning stored fat.
The enzyme PM20D1 transforms fat into heat!
American researchers would have discovered the “fat-burning” mechanism of the famous brown fat in mice. Originally, an enzyme called PM20D1, secreted by brown fat cells which triggers the production of compounds called n-acylated amino acids. These fatty n-acylates amino acids boost the “burnt” process, allowing weight loss.
When they injected these n-acylated amino acids to obese mice fed with a diet rich in fats, researchers noted significant weight loss after 8 days of treatment. Weight loss was limited to adipose tissue.
“”These data suggest that either PM20D1 either n-Acyl amino acids can be used for therapeutic purposes for the treatment of obesity and other disorders associated with obesity, such as diabetes and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis“Said Pr. Bruce Spiegelman, director of the Metabism department and chronic diseases in Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and main author of the study.
Brown fat, great hope of the fight against obesity
Before this study, a mitochondrial protein called thermogenonin (UCP-1 for UNCOUPLING PROTIN) was considered the only one at the origin of this unique capacity of brown cells to transform fat into heat. The results of the Pr. Spiegelman team made it possible to identify another path through which n-acylated amino acids can activate thermogenesis … and therefore another way to allow tomorrow to fight against obesity.
Brown fat is the subject of much research. In January 2015, an Australian team suggested the joint employment of leptin and insulin to transform white fat into brown fat. According to researchers from the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, it would be possible to create brown fat while now in a fresh environment, while another study published in the journal Cell Press indicates that Mirabegron, a drug used to treat bladder hyperactivity, could play this role. Other research published in December 2014 attributed these same virtues to a treatment used against rheumatoid arthritis.