Mesenchymal stem cells in obesity: insights for translational applications

Abstract

Obesity is now a major public health problem worldwide. Lifestyle modification to reduce the characteristic excess body adiposity is important in the treatment of obesity, but effective therapeutic intervention is still needed to control what has become an obesity epidemic. Unfortunately, many anti-obesity drugs have been withdrawn from market due to adverse side effects. Bariatric surgery therefore remains the most effective therapy for severe cases, although such surgery is invasive and researchers continue to seek new control strategies for obesity. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are a major source of adipocyte generation, and studies have been conducted into the potential roles of MSCs in treating obesity. However, despite significant progress in stem cell research and its potential applications for obesity, adipogenesis is a highly complex process and the molecular mechanisms governing MSC adipogenesis remain ill defined. In particular, successful clinical application of MSCs will require extensive identification and characterization of the transcriptional regulators controlling MSC adipogenesis. Since obesity is associated with the incidence of multiple important comorbidities, an in-depth understanding of the relationship between MSC adipogenesis and the comorbidities of obesity is also necessary to evaluate the potential of effective and safe MSC-based therapies for obesity. In addition, brown adipogenesis is an attractive topic from the viewpoint of therapeutic innovation and future research into MSC-based brown adipogenesis could lead to a novel breakthrough. Ongoing stem cell studies and emerging research fields such as epigenetics are expected to elucidate the complicated mechanisms at play in MSC adipogenesis and develop novel MSC-based therapeutic options for obesity. This review discusses the current understanding of MSCs in adipogenesis and their potential clinical applications for obesity.

IL6 Receptor Facilitates Adipogenesis Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells through Activating P38 Pathway

“…When cultured in specific inducing medium, MSCs reveal its osteogenic, chondrogenic or adipogenic potential. Since MSCs were proved to be a major source of adipocyte, the adipogenesis of MSCs affects the development of obesity and metabolic syndrome in various ways, and therapies based on MSC aiming to treat obesity and its commodities are raising increasing concern (2). For instance, Lee CW et al developed several MSC-based therapies which reduced obesity and metabolic disorders on rodents (3).…”

The Effect of Chronic Inflammation and Oxidative and Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in the Course of Metabolic Syndrome and Its Therapy

“…Stem cell transplantation is an excellent platform to metabolic syndrome-associated disease therapy, including obesity and type 2 diabetes [ 131 , 132 ]. Recent preclinical and clinical studies have revealed that stem cell therapy had been applied successfully in diabetes mellitus individuals.…”

Falcarindiol Purified From Carrots Leads to Elevated Levels of Lipid Droplets and Upregulation of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-γ Gene Expression in Cellular Models

“…In this study, we used two human cell lines; human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and human colon adenocarcinoma cells (HT-29) to investigate the effect of FaDOH on lipid metabolism at the cellular level. hMSCs are relevant cells as they play a key role in obesity ( Matsushita and Dzau, 2017 ) and are able to generate new adipose tissue through adipogenic differentiation driven by PPARγ ( Cristancho and Lazar, 2011 ). hMSCs have also shown a potential role in the treatment of diabetes ( Moshtagh et al, 2013 ) and have shown to be involved in the progression of cancers ( Lopatina et al, 2016 ; Ridge et al, 2017 ).…”