The obese population continues to grow on a global scale.Diabetes and arteriosclerosis tend to be the focus of attention when it comes to obesity-related diseases, but there is also an increased risk of developing diseases closely related to immunocompetent cells such as autoimmune diseases, chronic airway inflammation diseases such as asthma and cancer. It's becoming clear.The group of Professor Yusuke Endo and Professor Toshinori Nakayama of the Chiba University School of Medicine, in collaboration with the group of Professor Kotaro Yokote, a cell therapy internal medicine professor of the same university, is a fatty acid synthase that is highly expressed in obese patients. We discovered that "ACC1" has the effect of causing autoimmune diseases.
The research group found that ACC1 expression was elevated in helper T cells in obese mice.Therefore, we developed experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis in obese mice and administered TOFA, a competitive inhibitor of ACC1, to improve the condition.In other words, it became clear that suppressing ACC1 can control autoimmune inflammation.We also found that in obese patients, Th17 cells, which are closely associated with chronic steroid-resistant airway inflammation and autoimmune diseases, are increased and correlate with ACC1 expression levels.Furthermore, using ACC1-deficient mice, we clarified the molecular mechanism by which ACC1 induces Th17 cell differentiation.In the future, it is expected that it will be useful for the treatment of obesity-related diseases by targeting ACC1 and the fatty acid synthesis pathway controlled by ACC1 for drug discovery.
The research results were published in the online version of the American scientific journal "Cell Reports" on July 2015, 7 (Eastern Time).
