Is it not a dream to lose weight by lying down? What other information is worth paying attention to behind the "switch" for burning fat?

Everyone knows the simple principle of weight loss: create a gap between energy intake and energy expenditure.

"Eat less and move more, eat healthily, control your mouth and move your legs..."

Well, well said, but don't say it again.

It would be great if there really was a safe and effective "lying slimming pill" in the world. After a busy day at work, you could go home and take it, have a good sleep, and when you wake up you'll feel refreshed, in better shape, and healthier. How great that would be!

Recently, you must have heard about the topic of "the target site for burning fat has been discovered". People who can't control their mouths and legs are celebrating it - doesn't this mean that lying down and losing weight is no longer a dream? !

Behind this is a new discovery published in the journal Nature by the team of Professor Yin Zhinan of Jinan University: Interleukin-27 (IL-27, hereinafter referred to as "IL-27") can directly target fat cells, promote their heat production and energy consumption, and has the potential to become a drug.

(Click to watch the video)

Kong Lingzhi, a member of the Expert Advisory Committee of the Healthy China Action Promotion Committee, once said that the current overweight and obesity rate among Chinese adults has exceeded 50%, nearly 20% among children and adolescents aged 6 to 17, and 10% among children under 6. Overweight and obesity have become an important public health issue affecting the health of Chinese residents.

[The "switch" for burning fat has really been found]

We all know that the root cause of obesity is that calorie intake is greater than consumption, causing energy to accumulate in fat cells in the form of lipids. This is why when we talk about losing weight, we mean exercise and diet control.

In this process, there is another important factor involved: immune cells.

On November 24, 2021, Professor Yin Zhinan's team from the Institute of Biomedical Translational Studies, School of Medicine, Jinan University published an online paper titled "IL-27 signaling promotes adipocyte thermogenesis and energy expenditure" in the journal Nature.

(Screenshot of the paper)

The study broke through the traditional concept that interleukin IL-27 specifically regulates the immune system. It was discovered for the first time that IL-27 can directly target and promote the browning and heat production of fat cells, thereby reducing obesity and improving type 2 diabetes by burning lipids.

Professor Yin Zhinan, who led this important study, said in an interview: "It is particularly urgent to find new (obesity) treatment targets and molecules that directly target fat cells and effectively reduce weight." If we can find them, it means that there will be a breakthrough in obesity treatment, and we may have really hit the 'fat burning switch' in the human body. "

And this "switch" was actually found - interleukin IL-27.

After the article was published, Yin Zhinan received many emails from friends who were eager to become volunteers for the human trial.

However, Yin Zhinan, the supervisor of this research which lasted for more than seven years, has cautiously denied this judgment: "We can only say that interleukin-27 is a new target in the field of obesity and insulin resistance. But whether it can really treat obesity needs further verification."

However, in any case, interleukin-27, which was previously thought to only regulate the immune system and have pro-inflammatory effects, has obviously been expanded to new functions by this study. According to Yin Zhinan, in addition to its effects on fat cells, the team is currently studying its effects on liver cells, and is also working with other research teams to explore its new possibilities in more disease areas.

Since IL-27 is a molecule normally expressed in the body, not an artificially synthesized exogenous compound, it is highly safe. "It can improve type 2 diabetes, burn fat, reduce weight, and improve the sensitivity of insulin signal response from a mechanism perspective without restricting diet or dieting," said Li Dehai, another first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at Zhuhai People's Hospital affiliated to Jinan University.

Professor Yin Zhinan's team

[How to understand this important research result in a simple way? ]

Fat cells are divided into white fat, brown fat and beige fat based on their morphology, metabolism, location and development.

White fat is mainly distributed in the subcutaneous tissue and around the internal organs. Its function is to store excess energy in the body for use when needed. It is also the "real culprit" of obesity.

Brown fat is mainly distributed between the shoulder blades, neck and back, armpits, mediastinum and around the kidneys. It contains a large number of mitochondria and has the function of burning fat and producing heat.

Beige fat is mainly distributed in some grandmother cells and white cells in white adipose tissue, and also has the function of burning fat and producing heat.

Therefore, not all fat cells are bad, and turning bad fat cells into good fat cells is a very wise choice.

IL-27 is a molecule normally expressed in the body and is not an artificially synthesized exogenous compound. It has good safety and therefore has great clinical application potential and market value.

Professor Yin Zhinan's team is very much looking forward to industrializing this therapeutic target as soon as possible and benefiting the obese population. It is hoped that in the near future, IL-27 can become the secret "weapon" for thousands of boys and girls to maintain a perfect figure forever.

To explain, this is actually a spy film set inside the human body.

Interleukin IL-27, through its "own man" IL-27Rα, which is inserted at the entrance of fat cells, turns the enemy into a friend, turning the "white fat" that makes us fat into brown fat with the function of burning fat and producing heat, activating "fat burning", and finally converting the lipids in the fat tissue into heat for consumption.

It can be said that it is using magic to fight magic, letting fat fight fat, and using fat’s internal consumption to achieve the goal of losing weight.

【You can lose weight just by lying down】

Traditional thinking holds that interleukin IL-27 exists as a factor that targets immune cells and only plays an important role in regulating the body's immune process.

Professor Yin's team constructed a genetically engineered mouse and a high-fat diet-induced obesity model. They fed mice a high-calorie, high-fat diet to induce obesity and related metabolic diseases in mice, simulating human obesity. Combined with the serum sample data of obese people, they found that the level of interleukin IL-27 in the serum of obese people was significantly lower than that of IL-27 in normal people.

In other words, IL-27 is different in obese people and normal people.

Of course, a mere “different” is not enough to cause any waves. To be published in Nature, IL-27 is quite impressive.

Scientists injected recombinant IL-27 into obese mice, and something magical happened: the obese mice lost a lot of weight and their insulin sensitivity increased.

This is really serious. Low insulin sensitivity, or insulin resistance, is actually related to obesity and type 2 diabetes in many people.

If the mouse response can eventually be applied to humans...

Things like reducing fat without losing muscle, eating well and sleeping well to lose weight naturally, and even losing weight without surgery as diabetics and obese people hope...all of these may be possible.

Just...the great scientific workers have firmly grasped the needs of the general public.

Is the dream of lying down to lose weight coming true?

It’s hard not to be excited by such a series of results.

After all, neither starving yourself by dieting nor being tired by exercising can make you lose weight happily. Once the medicine that can help supplement interleukin 27 is developed, lying down and losing weight can become a reality.

But Yin Zhinan is very cautious about this. He pointed out that the current test has only been completed on mice, and how it performs in large animals or even humans still needs further verification.

Taking the conclusion that interleukin 27 can make mouse fat cells produce heat as an example, the heat production mode of humans is very different from that of mice. If humans are placed in a low-temperature environment, they produce heat through a variety of pathways, including the secretion of adrenaline.

At the same time, the fat cells that interleukin 27 directly targets are actually beige and brown fat cells, which account for a smaller proportion than the more familiar direct fat - ordinary fat, so its effect and limit on weight loss still need to be studied.

"We can only say that IL-27 may be a new target in the field of obesity and insulin resistance. This does not affect our original intention of making it a target," Yin Zhinan told China Newsweek.

For this reason, Yin Zhinan said that although his team has currently launched a plan to jointly develop RNA drugs with capital, the synthesis and development of RNA drugs itself takes time. After that, it must be proved that it can be expressed in the body, and its safety must be proven through large animal experiments and approved by the National Medical Products Administration before it can enter the clinic. This stage may take at least three years.

If everything goes well, how long will it take for such a drug to be available on the market? Yin Zhinan's answer is 5 to 8 years.

Moreover, from a personal perspective, Yin Zhinan does not support the idea of ​​"lying down to lose weight", after all, exercise is beneficial to the human body at any time. Next, his team will continue to explore non-drug intervention measures to reduce or increase the level of interleukin-27 in obese patients, such as exercise, diet, and probiotics, to theoretically prove their relevance.

IL-27 is a molecule normally expressed in the human body

Has great clinical application potential and market value

In recent years, with the continuous increase in the intake of high-energy foods such as fat and sugar, and the increasing sedentary nature of work, the rate of people suffering from overweight or obesity has risen rapidly.

"Insulin resistance is not only the cause of obesity, but also causes a series of metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, polycystic ovary syndrome, etc. If the problem of insulin resistance can be improved, it may be possible to find better treatments for obesity and many metabolic diseases." Yin Zhinan said.

Yin Zhinan has been engaged in basic and clinical research on immunity and health for a long time. In 2014, he proposed to study obesity from the perspective of the immune system to see if he could bring new approaches and new hopes to obesity treatment from the perspective of the immune system.

"We look forward to industrializing this therapeutic target as soon as possible, promoting its clinical application, and developing RNA-related drugs to provide a new treatment method for a series of metabolic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and fatty liver." Yin Zhinan also revealed another research direction, which is to predict physical health by changes in IL-27 levels.

【We will expand research in more disease areas】

In addition, compared to weight loss, the medical community is more concerned about the effect of interleukin-27 on insulin resistance, which is more closely related to the treatment of chronic metabolic diseases.

According to Yin Zhinan, during the experiment, the team found that in the fourth week of feeding the mice a high-fat diet, the mice had not become fat, but had already shown increased blood sugar levels.

"This phenomenon is very important, indicating that insulin resistance comes first and obesity comes later. When we used interleukin-27 to treat obese mice, they lost weight while their insulin resistance also improved. This is what really excites us," Yin Zhinan told China News Weekly.

Not only that, interleukin-27, which was previously thought to only target immune cells, has now been found to be able to target fat cells, so it may have the potential to act on other tissue cells.

For example, Yin Zhinan's team is currently conducting research on the effects of interleukin-27 on fatty liver and has reached preliminary conclusions. "This shows that interleukin-27 has different signal transduction effects on different cells, and its biological activity is different from the corresponding diseases," Yin Zhinan explained.

Another important significance of this study is that Yin Zhinan's team currently has a large number of genetically engineered mice related to the IL-27 receptor. If these resources are shared, it will save other scientific research teams a lot of time in constructing mouse models.

Therefore, in addition to the research work in his own laboratory, Yin Zhinan's team is also working with other scientific research teams to expand the function of the interleukin-27 signaling pathway. For example, the collaboration with Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology is to explore the effects of interleukin-27 on female pregnancy, polycystic ovary syndrome, ovarian aging, etc.

Of course, all this is just the beginning. There are still too many unknowns about life and human beings. In the fog, we can only explore little by little.

Parallel to scientists' efforts, we are heading into a weight health crisis.

According to the latest data from the "China Residents' Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status Report (2020)", more than half of the adult residents in my country are overweight and obese, with the overweight rate of adult residents (≥18 years old) being 34.3% and the obesity rate being 16.4%.

This is the first time that the figure of more than 1/2 has appeared in a national survey report.

According to my country's standards, adults with BMI ≥ 28 are obese, and 24≤ BMI<28 are overweight. Hurry and calculate it according to your height and weight!

On the one hand, there are more and more unhealthy obesity, and on the other hand, there are more and more excessive anxieties about the "perfect body". If the above cutting-edge research can really be turned into reality, it will not only help patients who are really troubled by obesity, but also help save those who are using extreme methods to lose weight, freeing many people from the troubles of weight.

However, if you are ready to lie down and lose weight after reading this, wake up quickly.

The current research is still at the stage of cell and mouse experiments, but scientists have seen a glimmer of hope. From the discovery of a drug target to its production and use, there is still a long, long way to go.

Before scientists continue to work hard to help mice achieve healthy fat loss, and before the miracle drug we dream of is truly developed, we must first learn to accept ourselves and pursue a healthy life (have you completed this year’s weight loss flag? There are only 10 days left until 2022).

Paper link:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04127-5

Comprehensive sources: Science and Technology Daily, Jinan University Media Integration Center, China News Weekly, Dingxiang Doctor, etc.