Scientists Discover How to Stimulate Brown Fat to Burn More Energy from Food

There may be a new way to combat excess weight. Scientists have discovered a new way to stimulate brown fat and thus burn more energy from food.

"Not all fat is equal," said Alexander Pfeifer, one of the researchers, in a news release. "If we are able to activate brown fat cells or to convert white fat cells into brown ones, it might be possible to simply melt excess fat away."

Humans have two different types of fat: white fat cells and brown fat cells. Brown fat cells can act as a desirable heater to convert excess energy into heat.

In order to better understand how best to activate brown fat cells, the researchers examined a signaling molecule. They found that this molecule is capable of activating brown fat cells: adenosine. Adenosine is typically released during stress, and crucial for transmitting the adenosine signal is the adenosine receptor A2A.

"If adenosine binds to this receptor in brown fat cells, fat burning is significantly stimulated," said Thorsten Gnad, one of the researchers, in a news release.

That's not all the researchers found. The scientist investigated the possibility that adenosine transforms white fat cells into brown fat cells, a process termed "browning." White fat cells normally cannot be induced to burn excess fat by adenosine since they lack the A2A receptor. Yet by transferring the A2A receptor gene to white fat cells in mice, the scientists caused the white fat cells to brown.

"Through the administration of adenosine-like substances, the mice actually lost weight," said Alexander Pfeifer, one of the researchers.

That said, scientists still need to further investigate this process before applying treatments in humans. This means that clinical application is still far off. That said, the study does open new ways for further study.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.