Increasing healthy brown fat can help control weight and reduce symptoms of diabetes. In this sense, engineers have developed a simple and innovative method to directly convert white fat into brown fat (more recommended and healthy) outside the body and then reimplant it in a patient.
The technique uses fat grafting procedures in which fat is removed from under the skin and then transplanted into the same patient.
Find out more about the benefits of brown fat and the significance of this study.
Why is brown fat better?
Brown adipose tissue in the body can burn enormous amounts of energy to generate heat. In addition, human and animal studies have suggested that increasing the amount of healthy brown fat could help control weight and reduce symptoms of diabetes. However, the safe and effective way to increase this type of adipose tissue has been a major challenge for researchers.
Methods to create brown fat in the body
A team from the Columbia University School of Engineering led by Sam Sia, professor of biomedical engineering, has developed a simple and innovative method to directly convert white fat to brown fat outside the body and then reimplant it in a patient .
The technique uses fat grafting procedures commonly performed by plastic surgeons, in which fat is removed from under the skin and then transplanted into the same patient for cosmetic or reconstructive purposes. In this regard, the researchers reported that they were able to successfully transform the collected white fat into brown fat in the laboratory for possible use as therapy.
Other methods of increasing brown fat include chronic exposure to cold, which is uncomfortable for most people, and pharmaceuticals that can cause side effects by attacking other organs. Therefore, this method appears to be safer and more controllable, as the amount of fat injected can be adjusted. Furthermore, the process is so simple that it could be carried out using an automated system within a doctor's office or in any specialized clinic.
How
grow brown fat
The team of researchers converted white fat to brown fat by culturing tissue fragments in media containing growth factors and other endogenous "browning" factors for one to three weeks to stimulate the fat's discoloration process as well as its composition. chemistry. They also assessed the change in tonality of white fat by measuring the levels of various brown fat biomarkers, including mitochondrial (cell) activity and the brown fat protein marker.
Similarly, in one of the study's experiments, they discovered that subcutaneous white fat in mice could be converted directly into brown fat outside the body, and that this type of fatty substance survived and remained stable after injection into the same mouse. for a long period.
Why is this study on brown fat relevant?
The persistence of converted brown fat is very important because it is known that when white fat is naturally stimulated to become brown fat; for example through exposure to cold, it can change rapidly again when stimulation is removed.
The researchers used their methods on human subcutaneous fat and were able to effectively convert it to brown fat. This suggests that it might one day be possible to try this approach in humans as a potential therapy to aid weight loss, control blood glucose levels, or prevent weight gain.
conclusion
While mice on a high-fat diet treated with directly converted brown fat in the experiment did not show statistically significant weight loss compared to a control group treated with unconverted white fat, the study shows that with a simple and scalable strategy With tissue grafting, new approaches to weight loss can be achieved with low complication rates and long-term efficacy.
Reference
- Blumenfeld el al. (2018). Innovative technique converts white fat to brown fat. Scientific Reports, 8. [Revised November 2018]
