BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Ember: warming up to brown fat

October 11, 2012 7:00 AM UTC

A team led by Boston-area researchers has shown that inhibiting a cation channel dubbed TRPV4 induced white fat cells to behave like brown fat, thereby protecting mice from diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance.1 Ember Therapeutics Inc. has options to in-license the findings as a part of a trio of new deals for brown fat-related targets.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT), or brown fat, has a high mitochondrial content that allows it to burn and dissipate chemical energy as heat more efficiently than white adipose and other tissues. Although human adults have only small deposits of brown fat compared with infants and rodents, a potential strategy for treating obesity and related metabolic conditions is inducing white adipose tissue to take on the mitochondrial and thermogenic properties of brown fat-an approach known as browning...