BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Going immune on beige fat

July 10, 2014 7:00 AM UTC

Since its founding in 2010, Ember Therapeutics Inc. has been exploiting the biology of brown and beige fat to treat metabolic diseases, including obesity and type 2 diabetes. Now, the biotech has an option to license the hormone meteorin glial cell differentiation regulator-like, one of the first molecules found to activate a newly identified immune system-regulated pathway responsible for driving the formation of beige fat.1,2

Beige adipocytes and their brown adipocyte cousins are mitochondria-rich cells that metabolize triglycerides to generate heat. Beige adipocytes are found interspersed within white adipose tissue, whereas brown adipocytes are found in concentrated depots but only at trace levels in adults. Beige and brown adipocytes are more metabolically active than white adipocytes, which store energy as triglycerides...