Identification and characterization of adipose surface epitopes

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Adipose tissue is a central regulator of metabolism and an important pharmacological target to treat the metabolic consequences of obesity, such as insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. Among the various cellular compartments, the adipocyte cell surface is especially appealing as a drug target as it contains various proteins that when activated or inhibited promote adipocyte health, change its endocrine function and eventually maintain or restore whole-body insulin sensitivity. In addition, cell surface proteins are readily accessible by various drug classes. However, targeting individual cell surface proteins in adipocytes has been difficult due to important functions of these proteins outside adipose tissue, raising various safety concerns. Thus, one of the biggest challenges is the lack of adipose selective surface proteins and/or targeting reagents. Here, we discuss several receptor families with an important function in adipogenesis and mature adipocytes to highlight the complexity at the cell surface and illustrate the problems with identifying adipose selective proteins. We then discuss that, while no unique adipocyte surface protein might exist, how splicing, posttranslational modifications as well as protein/protein interactions can create enormous diversity at the cell surface that vastly expands the space of potentially unique epitopes and how these selective epitopes

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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