Metabolic conditions linked to obesity could be treated by removing fat from a person, turning it into energy-burning “beige fat” using CRISPR gene editing and then implanting the altered fat back into the body, animal studies suggest.
“It would be a personalised therapy for metabolic disease,” says Silvia Corvera at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
While most fat merely stores energy, some types – known as brown and beige fat – burn glucose to produce heat. People have small patches of brown fat but it only becomes active after repeated exposure to the cold.
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Her team previously showed that implanting extra beige fat into mice fed a high-fat diet makes them better at regulating blood sugar levels. Another team led by her colleague Michael Czech has shown that normal fat can be turned into what appears to be beige fat by switching off a gene called NRIP1.
Now the two teams have joined forces. The researchers used CRISPR genome editing to deactivate the NRIP1 gene in human fat precursor cells, which then gave rise to beige fat cells. They then implanted these cells into mice.
When the animals were put on a high-fat diet, those implanted with the human beige fat put on almost half as much weight as those implanted with unedited human fat. Those given beige fat also continued to regulate blood sugar normally, whereas those with normal fat became glucose intolerant.
Around a gram of fat from a person would provide enough fat precursor cells for the treatment, says Corvera. The method will need to be tested in non-human primates before being tried in humans.
Reference: bioRxiv, DOI:
