Poster #061
Tackling Age-Associated Visceral Adiposity
Mentor: Jiapeng Han, Grad Student
Middle-aged adults tend to accumulate more visceral white adipose tissue (vWAT). Our recent work has shown that age-associated visceral adiposity is primarily caused by increased adipogenesis, the process by which new adipocytes are generated from adipocyte progenitor cells (APCs). We identified a new, middle-age specific APC subpopulation, which we named committed preadipocyte, age-specific (CP-As). In this study, we will investigate whether the Leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR) plays a crucial role in the enhanced adipogenic capacity of CP-As. We isolated primary APCs from vWAT of young- and middle-aged mice for in vitro adipogenic differentiation, during which EC359–a potent LIFR inhibitor–was added to assess its impact on adipogenesis. At the end, mature adipocytes were stained with Oil Red O to quantify the amount of lipids formed, indicating the efficiency of adipogenesis. Future research should investigate whether pharmacological inhibition or genetic ablation of LIFR has the same effect in vivo.