Obesity, Weight Loss and Adipose Stem Cells
By 2050, without changes to current trends, one in three adolescents and two in three adults are projected to have obesity. The capacity of the adipose tissue to expand through differentiation of adipose progenitor cells (APC) is key for maintaining metabolic health. Incretin mimetics such as Ozempic are transforming the therapeutic management of obesity and its associated cardiometabolic disorders since most people can now achieve rapid and substantial weight reduction and improvement of many health outcomes, although withdrawal leads to weight regain, which is associated with poor cardiometabolic outcomes.
Our Goal is to determine whether incretin mimetics promote APCs differentiation in mice and human cells, whether obesity affects APCs response and identify the mechanisms
Our Research & Discoveries:
Our research & discoveries:
- High-fat diet impairs the differentiation potential of APCs.
- Semaglutide treatment induces weight loss, with obesity and diabetes reversal in mice.
- Treatment with incretin mimetics improves the capacity of APCs to differentiate exceeding that achieved by equivalent dietary weight loss intervention.
This project is a collaboration with the Hilgendorf Lab, whose expertise in adipose tissue biology enables us to explore this question using complementary and interdisciplinary perspectives.