Fat-regenerating stem cells found in mice

Washington, Oct 11: Researchers have identified stem cells with the capacity to build fat. They found that transplants of the progenitor cells, isolated from the fat tissue of normal mice, can restore normal fat tissue in animals that are otherwise lacking it.

The findings may yield insight into the causes of obesity, a condition characterised by an increase in both the size and number of fat cells. Progenitor cells have a capacity to differentiate into a specific type of cell.

"In obesity, there is an increase in fat cell number," said Matthew Rodeheffer of the Rockefeller University. "The question is: what are the events that lead to that increase? You need to know how fat cell number is normally regulated to know what goes wrong in obesity. Identifying fat cell precursors is a first step toward understanding this process."

Earlier studies identified cells with the capacity to differentiate into fat in lab dishes. However, those cells proved unable or extremely limited in their ability to form fat in living animals, according to a varsity release.

In the new study, the research team led by Jeffrey Friedman, also of the university, first removed fat tissue from mice and treated the tissue with an enzyme that broke it down into individual cells. Separating the mature fat cells from the rest is a simple proposition, Rodeheffer said, because the lipid-loaded cells float.

They then sorted the remaining cells based on the expression of proteins found at their surfaces, isolating those cells bearing proteins that are known to identify other types of stem cells. Two of the cell populations they isolated could produce fat in lab dishes, they found.

Just one of these two populations had the capacity to re-grow a normal fat pad in mice, they reported. The researchers made that discovery by injecting the progenitor cells into the residual fat tissue of mice with a condition known as lipodystrophy. Those animals are unable to produce fat normally and they also have diabetes.

Injection with the newly discovered fat cell progenitors reversed the animals' diabetes and restored their fat levels within two weeks, they report.

Rodeheffer said that there are likely to be analogous cells in humans. If so, those cells might be used in a similar manner to treat people with lipodystrophy. The cells left over when you remove fat cells from fat tissue are also being explored for use in regenerating heart and other tissues, he noted.

These findings will appear in the Oct 17 issue of the journal Cell.