The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health has appointed Pennington biomedical researcher Dr. Carrie Elks awarded a $1.4 million grant to investigate insulin resistance and inflammation in fat cells. Dr. Elks will use the grant for her Matrix Biology Laboratory’s project “Adipocyte cytokine signaling as a coordinator of adipose tissue function.”
The proposed project is based on a communication loop recently discovered by Dr. Elks and her team. The bidirectional communication loop runs between fat cells and immune cells. Interruptions to this loop promote obesity and reduce the function of adipose tissue. The loop is controlled by a small protein called Oncostatin M, or OSM, and the project will further investigate how the protein and its communication loop work in maintaining body weight.
I am grateful that the NIDDK has judged this discovery and our planned research as worthy of this generous grant. Communication between fat cells and immune cells is crucial for proper functioning of adipose tissue, and can change the way fat cells respond to immune cells, leading to inflammation. The results of this study will ideally reveal new patterns in cell communication that can be further evaluated to treat obesity and other metabolic diseases.”
Dr. Carrie Elks, assistant professor of research at Pennington Biomedical Research Center and LSU alumna
The OSM protein is produced by immune cells in fat tissue, but the lab’s research shows that when fat cells lack the receptor for OSM, it leads to adipose tissue inflammation and insulin resistance. The lab’s findings suggest that signals from the OSM protein are needed for adipose tissue to function properly, but how such an interruption could cause inflammation and insulin resistance remains to be seen.
Dr. Elks and her team will test whether fat cells regulate the amount of free cytokine proteins to maintain homeostasis in adipose tissue. They will test whether the continued exposure of fat cells to OSM makes them less responsive to OSMR, making them resistant to insulin.
“I congratulate Dr. Elks on her laboratory’s recent discovery and subsequent accolade to continue investigating it,” said Dr. Elks. John Kirwan, executive director of Pennington Biomedical. “This research is a perfect example of our ‘cells to society’ mantra as we seek to investigate the roots of obesity and open new avenues for how best to prevent and treat it.”
Dr.’s Matrix Biology laboratory Elks studies communication networks at the cellular level that have been linked to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and worsening Crohn’s disease in humans. The laboratory works to discover methods to regulate adipose tissue function with the ultimate goal of developing better treatments for patients with metabolic diseases.