James L. Kirkland

Aging in adipocytes: potential impact of inherent, depot-specific mechanisms.

Fat mass and tissue distribution change dramatically throughout life. Fat depot sizes reach a peak by middle or early old age, followed by a substantial decline, together with fat tissue dysfunction and redistribution in advanced old age. These changes are associated with health complications, including type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, dyslipidemia, thermal dysregulation, and skin ulcers, particularly in advanced old age. Fat tissue growth occurs through increases in size and number of fat cells. Fat cells turn over throughout the lifespan, with new fat cells developing from preadipocytes, which are of mesenchymal origin. The pool of preadipocytes comprises 15-50% of the cells in fat tissue. Since fat tissue turns over throughout life, characteristics of these cells very likely have a significant impact on fat tissue growth, plasticity, function, and distribution. The aims of this review are to highlight recent findings regarding changes in preadipocyte cell dynamics and function with aging, and to consider how inherent characteristics of these cells potentially contribute to age- and depot-dependent changes in fat tissue development and function.

Esterification of free fatty acids in adipocytes: a comparison between octanoate and oleate.

Medium-chain triacylglycerols (MCT) are present in milk, coconut oil and other foods, and are used therapeutically in special diets for certain disorders of lipid and glucose utilization. Recently, it has become apparent that MCT are not only oxidized in the liver, but are also present in lymph and fat tissue, particularly after chronic treatment. To evaluate the influence of MCT on metabolism in fat cells, we compared incorporation of octanoate and oleate into cellular triacylglycerols of 3T3-L1 adipocytes as well as their effects on preadipocyte differentiation. We found that less octanoate than oleate was stored and that more octanoate than oleate was oxidized. Octanoate was esterified to a greater extent at the sn-1,3 position of glyceryl carbons than at the sn-2 position, whereas the opposite was true for oleate. Glycerol release from fat cells pre-treated with octanoate was also greater than from cells pre-treated with oleate, presumably related to the preferential release of octanoate from the sn-1,3 position. Octanoate was not incorporated into lipids in undifferentiated cells and did not induce differentiation in these cells, whereas oleate was readily stored and actually induced differentiation. Incorporation of octanoate into lipids increased as cells differentiated, but reached a maximum of about 10% of the total stored fatty acids. If these effects in vitro also occur in vivo, substitution of octanoate for oleate or other long-chain fatty acids could have the beneficial effect of diminishing fat-cell number and lipid content.

Cellular Senescence and the Biology of Aging, Disease, and Frailty

Population aging simultaneously highlights the remarkable advances in science, medicine, and public policy, and the formidable challenges facing society. Indeed, aging is the primary risk factor for many of the most common chronic diseases and frailty, which result in profound social and economic costs. Population aging also reveals an opportunity, i.e. interventions to disrupt the fundamental biology of aging could significantly delay the onset of age-related conditions as a group, and, as a result, extend the healthy life span, or health span. There is now considerable evidence that cellular senescence is an underlying mechanism of aging and age-related conditions. Cellular senescence is a process in which cells lose the ability to divide and damage neighboring cells by the factors they secrete, collectively referred to as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Herein, we discuss the concept of cellular senescence, review the evidence that implicates cellular senescence and SASP in age-related deterioration, hyperproliferation, and inflammation, and propose that this underlying mechanism of aging may play a fundamental role in the biology of frailty.

Inhibitors of Preadipocyte Replication: Opportunities for the Treatment of Obesity

The prevalence of obesity is increasing rapidly in Western countries, and associations between obesity and atherosclerosis, diabetes, and other serious diseases are becoming increasingly apparent (Rosenbaum et al. 1997). Frustratingly little progress has been made in developing effective treatments for obesity. Appetite-suppressant drugs, dietary, and behavioral approaches so far result in either loss of only a small percent of fat mass or in transient weight loss with rebound weight gain, often within a matter of months. Indeed, around 97% of obese subjects who lose weight through dieting regain the lost weight within 1 year. The potential side effects of centrally acting appetite suppressants are a concern. Furthermore, although the amount of fat tissue can increase or decrease more rapidly and to a greater extent than most other tissues, appetite suppression, dietary restriction, or surgical methods for reducing caloric intake can result in loss not only of fat mass, but also of muscle and other components of lean body mass. Hence, approaches specifically targeted to fat tissue may prove to be an attractive strategy for treating obesity and its complications.

The Aging Adipose Organ: Lipid Redistribution, Inflammation, and Cellular Senescence

White adipose tissue (WAT) is an immensely plastic organ that plays a vital role in regulating metabolic homeostasis and systemic inflammation. Advancing age mitigates the dynamic nature of WAT which promotes the manifestation of several lipodystrophic-associated comorbidities. Inflammation and the accumulation of senescence cells likely play a key role in this process by inhibiting adipogenesis. The reduction of WAT functional capacity with aging and the role that inflammation and cellular senescence may play in this process will be explored throughout this review.

TNFα-senescence initiates a STAT-dependent positive feedback loop, leading to a sustained interferon signature, DNA damage, and cytokine secretion

Cellular senescence is a cell fate program that entails essentially irreversible proliferative arrest in response to damage signals. Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα), an important pro-inflammatory cytokine secreted by some types of senescent cells, can induce senescence in mouse and human cells. However, downstream signaling pathways linking TNFα-related inflammation to senescence are not fully characterized. Using human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) as a model, we show that TNFα induces permanent growth arrest and increases p21CIP1, p16INK4A, and SA-β-gal, accompanied by persistent DNA damage and ROS production. By gene expression profiling, we identified the crucial involvement of inflammatory and JAK/STAT pathways in TNFα-mediated senescence. We found that TNFα activates a STAT-dependent autocrine loop that sustains cytokine secretion and an interferon signature to lock cells into senescence. Furthermore, we show STAT1/3 activation is necessary for cytokine and ROS production during TNFα-induced senescence. However, inhibition of STAT1/3 did not rescue cells from proliferative arrest, but rather suppressed cell cycle regulatory genes and altered TNFα-induced senescence. Our findings suggest a positive feedback mechanism via the STAT pathway that sustains cytokine production and reveal a reciprocal regulatory role of JAK/STAT in TNFα-mediated senescence.