2023-12-29 01:35:00
[이뉴스투데이 수도권취재본부 권오경 기자] Recently, the research team of Professor Jae-beom Kim of the Department of Life Sciences at the College of Natural Sciences at Seoul National University and the research team of Professor Jong-kyung Kim of POSTECH showed that “invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells,” a type of immune cell in fat tissue, play a key role in the fat cell replacement process. I discovered that it can be done.
Professor Jaebeom Kim. [사진=서울대]
Obesity is a key risk factor that causes various metabolic diseases (diabetes and cardiovascular disease, etc.) and causes enormous socioeconomic losses worldwide (approximately 2 trillion dollars, as of 2020).
Obesity causes an inflammatory response within adipose tissue and the proportion of large “bad fat cells” increases. The accumulation of such bad fat cells causes various metabolic diseases such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and cardiovascular disease.
Therefore, the self-protection process of removing bad fat cells and replacing them with new healthy fat cells can help lower the inflammatory response of adipose tissue and safely store excess fat in obesity. However, nothing is known about how this self-protection process through ‘fat cell replacement’ is regulated.
This study revealed that a specific iNKT cell subpopulation within adipose tissue is newly generated in obesity and can selectively induce the death of large, inflammatory adipocytes through its high apoptotic ability.
On the other hand, it was found that other iNKT cell subpopulations in adipose tissue are 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 removal and replacement process of bad fat cells within adipose tissue, suggesting for the first time that these immune cells play an important role in maintaining healthy adipose tissue. “The discovery of this specific immune cell function opens a new chapter in overcoming obesity and developing treatments for metabolic diseases.”
This research outcome was published on December 21, 2023, in the online edition of ‘Nature Communications’, one of the top international academic journals in the field of biology.
This study was conducted with support from the Leader Researcher Support Project of the Ministry of Science and ICT.
◆ 논문명: Unique adipose tissue invariant natural killer T cell subpopulations 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)
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