Understanding how fat tissue dysfunction causes diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Having healthy fat (or adipose) tissue in the body that can expand appropriately to safely store nutrients is critical for health. If we are unable to make enough adipose tissue we instead store fat in tissues and organs that are not designed to do so, resulting in ill-health. This is most striking in rare patients with lipodystrophy who can't make adipose tissue and suffer severe diabetes and heart problems as a result. However, similar effects are seen in obese individuals who have exceeded the storage capacity of their adipose tissue. We use models of obesity and severe adipose dysfunction such as lipodystrophy, as well as specifically changing the function of fat tissue. This allows us to understand more about how diabetes and heart disease develops in both lipodystrophy and obesity and how targeting fat tissue might combat these common diseases.
3D Image of a cultured adipocyte. Lipid droplets are labelled red, the lipid droplet protein, perilipin, labelled green and nucleus in blue. Image by Elisa Persiani.
Investigators: