City of Hope Finds New Stem Cell Behind Middle-Age
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- City of Hope researchers identified a new stem cell population called committed preadipocytes, age-specific (CP-As) that emerges in middle age and drives aggressive production of new belly fat cells, in a study published in Science.
- Co-corresponding author Qiong (Annabel) Wang, Ph.D. and UCLA collaborators showed that APCs transplanted from older mice into young mice generated large numbers of new fat cells, while APCs from young mice transplanted into older mice produced few, proving the fat-making ability is built into the older cells themselves.
- Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed APCs were relatively quiet in young mice but became highly active in middle-aged mice, with the leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR) signaling pathway identified as crucial for triggering CP-As to multiply and develop into fat cells in older mice.
- City of Hope researchers identified CP-A-like cells in human tissue samples, with these cells found in greater numbers in middle-aged individuals and showing a strong ability to generate new fat cells, suggesting the same process occurs in people.
- The findings challenge the prior understanding that age-related belly fat accumulation was driven primarily by existing fat cells enlarging, with the study providing the first evidence that new fat cell creation is a major driver of expanding waistlines.
- Researchers plan to track CP-A cells in further animal studies and explore ways to block or eliminate them, potentially leading to new therapies targeting age-related obesity.
Why it matters: The discovery gives drug developers a concrete cellular target (CP-A stem cells and the LIFR pathway) for tackling middle-age weight gain, which is linked to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and accelerated aging. With human tissue samples showing the same age-specific cell type in greater numbers among middle-aged people, the mouse findings appear to translate directly to the patient population most affected by expanding waistlines.
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