New tool for brown fat drug development research

Researchers led by Yu-Hua Tseng at Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School say they have created cell lines of human brown and white fat precursor cells that should help drug investigators working in the field. The work is designed to allow researchers to examine factors that are involved in the development and activity of each type of cell. "We can take human brown fat precursor cells, grow them in Petri dishes and then culture them to become energy-dissipating cells," says Dr. Tseng. "This cellular system provides a very important and exciting tool for understanding the biology of human brown fat tissue. It also offers a really nice system for drug screening." More