'Beige' Fat Cells Identified In Humans: Could They Hold The Key To Obesity-Fighting Drugs?

Researchers at UC San Fracisco have isolated an energy-burning "beige" fat cell from adult humans that's can convert unhealthy white ones into healthy brown cells.

For the first time, they have discovered that new genetic markers of this beige fat could provide important advances in new medications that may help fight obesity. The findings are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Previous research shows us that all mammals, including humans, have two types of fat with completely opposite functions. Where white cells store energy that's linked to diabetes and obesity (otherwise known as the bad fat), brown cells produce heat and burn energy that's associated with leanness. Babies are typically burn with more brown fat, which plays a defense against cold, whereas hibernating animals will store up on brown fat cells for similar reasons. However, until just recently, scientists have not known if it's been possible to convert, or recruit, white fat into brown fat in response to other stresses (beige fat is found within white fat.)

For the study, researchers worked to isolate and clone single brown fat cells from two adult individuals. They found that after an examination of the clone cells, they were able to successfully isolate recruitable brown fat.

"This finding brings us another step closer to the goal of our laboratory, which is engineering fat cells to fight obesity," said senior investigator Shingo Kajimura, PhD, UCSF assistant professor of cell and tissue biology, with a joint appointment in the UCSF Diabetes Center, in a news release. "We are trying to learn how to convert white fat into brown fat, and until now, it had not been demonstrated that this recruitable form of brown fat is actually present in humans."

With this information, researchers later hope to find out how to convert white fat into brown fat via drug form with the help of certain molecular activity that's found in the body.