Novel Hormone Identified that Augments Brown Fat, Increases Energy Expenditure, and Reduces Obesity and Insulin Resistance -
Ember Therapeutics, Inc., a company harnessing breakthroughs in brown fat biology and insulin sensitization to revolutionize the treatment of metabolic disease, announced the publication of key data supporting its lead brown fat biology program in the journal Nature. The paper details for the first time the discovery and identification of a new hormone, irisin, which is present and identical in mice and humans and has been shown to act on white fat cells in culture and in vivo to stimulate UCP1 expression and brown fat development. The publication outlines how even relatively short treatments of obese mice with irisin caused an increase in energy expenditure with no changes in activity levels or food intake, resulting in improved glucose homeostasis and weight loss.
This research was led by Bruce Spiegelman, Ph.D., professor of cell biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and a co-founder of Ember, and was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Ember recently entered into an exclusive license agreement with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for this irisin technology and is optimizing and developing a proprietary molecule designed to augment and activate the body’s brown fat... [PDF] Ember Therapeutics' Press Release -
