"Nature" discovers that a new hormone has an important relationship with diabetes and obesity!

There are many hormones in our body that will participate in the metabolic process to ensure that the metabolism of substances is in a dynamic and stable balance

Professor Gökhan Hotamisligil of the Chen Zengxi School of Public Health of Harvard University has also been pursuing the secret of hormones.

For traditional hormones, their systems usually include a single acting molecule and corresponding receptors

Lipolysis is a normal metabolic process when the body responds to hunger.

In some analytical studies, the level of FABP4 protein usually rises in the blood of patients with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

Especially for patients with type 1 diabetes, the FABP4 protein levels that they can detect in the serum samples from the early stages of the disease are rising, and the mouse model also confirmed this result

The new research further found that FABP4 does not work alone, but combines with adenosine kinase (ADK) and nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NPDK)

▲The new hormone contains three protein units, which can affect energy metabolism (picture source: reference [2])

Pancreatic islet B cells that can produce insulin are one of fabkin's targets, but fabkin is not friendly to pancreatic B cells

This chronic stress will cause the endoplasmic reticulum dysfunction of the pancreatic islet B cells and eventually cause cell death

The researchers managed to neutralize the function of fabkin in mice through antibody neutralization.

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Newly identified hormone may be a critical driver of type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

[2] Gökhan Hotamisligil, A hormone complex of FABP4 and nucleoside kinases regulates islet function, Nature (2021).