You probably never imagined your fat cells could heal wounds.
Scientists also didn’t think it was possible. But now they know differently, thanks to an Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation discovery.
OMRF’s Lorin Olson, Ph.D., recently led a team of scientists who found that fat cells can morph into scar-forming cells to help repair wounds. This finding could someday lead to major treatment implications for certain types of wounds.
“We’ve long viewed fat cells as having reached their final identity,” Olson said. “This study shows they can completely change that identity by losing their stored fat, beginning to divide again and becoming fibroblasts that help repair injured tissue.”
Fibroblasts are the cells responsible for producing the connective tissue that closes wounds and forms scars. One study elsewhere had suggested fat cells might change – only temporarily – to help heal wounds, but the idea remained controversial, with conflicting findings from other labs.
Using a new genetic tracing technique, Olson’s lab followed individual fat cells over 21 days during wound healing. In a result that surprised Olson, the cells changed into fibroblasts, and they remained that way after the wound healed.
“Like most scientists in this field, I was highly skeptical that fat cells could transform,” he said. “We think this discovery alters scientific dogma.”
While the experiments were done in mice, Olson said there’s no reason to think the process differs in humans.
“Dr. Olson’s study changes the way we think about fat cells,” said OMRF’s vice president of research, Courtney Griffin, Ph.D. “Turns out they are much more adaptable than we realized.”
The findings also might explain diseases in which scar tissue develops abnormally, Olson said. In conditions such as scleroderma, fat beneath the skin disappears as excessive scar tissue forms. Similar changes may take place in some cancers, where fibroblasts surrounding tumors may contribute to disease progression.
Olson is now investigating the earliest steps of the process in which fats cells change to scar tissue. A better understanding of wound healing, he hopes, could lead to strategies to reduce harmful scar tissue and surgical adhesions while preserving the body’s ability to repair itself.
This discovery was published in the journal Cell Reports. The work was funded through grant Nos. R01-AR080896 and F32-AR083823 from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and by grants from the Presbyterian Health Foundation and the Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.
