Christian Dani - IBV, Nice

3D adipospheres derived from human iPSCs: A new tool for drug screening and cell-based therapy of obesity?

Christian Dani, PhD, invited by Xavier Prieur et Karim Si Tayeb  (Eq IV)
Director of "Cellules Souches et Différenciation" laboratory
iBV, UMR7277 CNRS - UMR1091 INSERM
Université Côte d'Azur

Abstract

In mammals, two types of adipocytes coexist, i.e. brown and white, which are both involved in energy balance regulation while having opposite functions. White adipose tissue (WAT) is dispersed throughout the body and is mainly involved in energy storage. In contrast to WAT, brown adipose tissue (BAT) is specialized in energy expenditure. Activated BAT consumes metabolic substrate and burns fat to produce heat via the uncoupling protein (UCP)-1). Brite/beige adipocytes were recently described as brown-like adipocytes (BAs) and represent a third type of adipocytes recruited in WAT. Therefore, BAs represent promising cell targets to counteract obesity. However, the scarcity of BAs in adults is a major limitation for a BA-based therapy of obesity, and the notion to increase the BA mass by transplanting BA stem cells in obese patients recently emerged. The next challenge is to identify an abundant and reliable source of BA stem cells. We will describe the capacity of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) to generate BA stem cells able to differentiate at a high efficiency in 3D culture. This cell model represents an unlimited source of human BAs that in a near future may be a suitable tool for both therapeutic transplantation and for the discovery of novel efficient and safe anti-obesity drugs.

Biography

Christian Dani (DR1 Inserm) leads the "Stem Cells and Differentiation" team at the Institut de Biologie Valrose in Nice. After a post-doctoral stay in the laboratory of Austin Smith, expert in embryonic stem cells (Stem Cell Institute, Edinburgh, UK), Christian Dani established the conditions for differentiating murine ES cells into adipocytes (Dani et al. J. Cell Sci. 1996). Then, in 2005 his team isolated adipocyte stem cells from human adipose tissue and demonstrated their therapeutic potential (Rodriguez et al. JEM, 2005). Recently, he derived adipocyte stem cells from human iPS and determined the conditions for generating 3D adipospheres.