"Overcoming Obesity Made Easier"… Seoul National University Discovers First Method to Remove Bad Fat Cells

'Invariant Natural Killer T Cells' Revealed

Overcoming obesity, known as a "disease of modern people," and various metabolic disorders caused by it is expected to become much easier.

On the 30th, research teams led by Professor Jaebeom Kim from the Department of Biological Sciences at Seoul National University and Professor Jongkyung Kim from POSTECH announced, "We have for the first time revealed the mechanism by which a specific immune cell removes, replaces, and regulates 'bad fat cells' within adipose tissue, thereby maintaining healthy adipose tissue." This research was conducted with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT's Leader Researcher Support Project.

Bad fat cells refer to key cells that cause obesity and various cardiovascular diseases. The immune cells discovered by the research team this time are a type of immune cell within adipose tissue called 'invariant natural killer T cells,' and it was revealed that these cells are effective in the 'self-protection process' that removes bad fat cells causing obesity and diabetes and replaces them with new fat cells. The self-protection process refers to the process that helps reduce inflammatory responses in adipose tissue and safely store excessive fat.

The research team expects that this study will open a new chapter in the treatment of obesity and cardiovascular diseases. The research results were published online on the 21st in Nature Communications, one of the top international journals in the field of biology.