Our scientists contribute to the discovery of new subtypes of fat cells

The team of Dr. Miroslav Baláž from the Biomedical Research Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the teams of Prof. Wolfrum from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and Dr. Spiegelman from Harvard University (USA) discovered several new subtypes of beige fat cells that use different mechanisms to generate heat and may help in the treatment of obesity and metabolic diseases.

The results of this collaboration were recently published in two papers (here and here) in the prestigious journal Cell Metabolism, which is one of the top three most respected scientific publications in endocrinology and metabolism in the world, according to the Journal Citation Reports.

Adipose tissue is a complex mixture of different cell types, and the most important in terms of tissue function are fat cells. Three basic types of fat cells are found in the body of laboratory mice and in the human body as well.

The most numerous are the white fat cells, whose main function is to store excess energy in the form of fat droplets. Brown fat cells, on the other hand, can use the stored energy to generate heat.

Twelve years ago, beige fat cells, which at first glance resemble brown fat cells in morphology and function but appear in white adipose tissue in response to cold, were described for the first time.

A fraction of beige fat cells exclusively use the classical mechanism of heat generation, which is mediated by the UCP1 protein. Other types rely on increased production of adenosine triphosphate, which is the driving force for alternative mechanisms of heat generation, or a combination of these mechanisms.

Dr. Baláž’s team has contributed to the important discovery of new subtypes of beige fat cells that use different mechanisms to generate heat, finding that they are also present and abundant in human adipose tissue.

This finding is important since, unlike mouse, human adipose tissue contains only small amounts of UCP1 protein and therefore appears to primarily use alternative mechanisms to generate heat.

Because of its high metabolic activity, beige adipose cells are considered a promising target for the treatment of obesity and metabolic diseases.

References

1. Wu J, Boström P, Sparks LM, Ye L, Choi JH, Giang A, Khandekar M, Virtanen KA, Nuutila P, Schaart G, Huang K, Tu H, van Marken Lichtenbelt WD, Hoeks J, Enerbäck S, Schrauwen P, Spiegelman BM. Beige adipocytes are a distinct type of thermogenic fat cell in mouse and human. in Cell, 2012 Jul 20; 150(2):366-76. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.05.016.
2. Rosenwald M, Perdikari A, Rülicke T, Wolfrum C. Bi-directional interconversion of brite and white adipocytes. in Nat Cell Biol, 2013 Jun; 15(6):659-67. doi: 10.1038/ncb2740.
3. Wang T, Sharma AK, Wu C, Maushart CI, Ghosh A, Yang W, Stefanicka P, Kovanicova Z, Ukropec J, Zhang J, Arnold M, Klug M, De Bock K, Schneider U, Popescu C, Zheng B, Ding L, Long F, Dewal RS, Moser C, Sun W, Dong H, Takes M, Suelberg D, Mameghani A, Nocito A, Zech CJ, Chirindel A, Wild D, Burger IA, Schön MR, Dietrich A, Gao M, Heine M, Sun Y, Vargas-Castillo A, Søberg S, Scheele C, Balaz M, Blüher M, Betz MJ, Spiegelman BM, Wolfrum C. Single-nucleus transcriptomics identifies separate classes of UCP1 and futile cycle adipocytes. in Cell Metabolism, 2024 Jul 26: S1550-4131(24)00276-6. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2024.07.005.
4. Vargas-Castillo A, Sun Y, Smythers AL, Grauvogel L, Dumesic PA, Emont MP, Tsai LT, Rosen ED, Zammit NW, Shaffer SM, Ordonez M, Chouchani ET, Gygi SP, Wang T, Sharma AK, Balaz M, Wolfrum C, Spiegelman BM. Development of a functional beige fat cell line uncovers independent subclasses of cells expressing UCP1 and the futile creatine cycle. in Cell Metabolism, 2024 Jul 24: S1550-4131(24)00273-0. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2024.07.002.

Miroslav Baláž

is a graduate of the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Comenius University in Bratislava. After obtaining his PhD in animal physiology, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow and researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. His research focuses on the metabolism and energetics of adipose tissue. He has contributed to the discovery of several molecular mechanisms that control the metabolic activity of fat cells. The results of his work have been published in prestigious scientific journals. Currently, he is the head of the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Metabolism at the Biomedical Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Text: M. Baláž; E. Rybárová, BMC SAS, Eva Krištofová, Stanislava Longauerová

Photo: M. Baláž