The researchers, led by Manuel Serrano, have also been able to demonstrate that a synthetic compound also generated at the CNIO produces the same anti-obesity effects in animals as the gene studied. The finding supports a hypothesis that is gaining strength among researchers in the area: that cancer and aging, and now also obesity, are different manifestations of the same, more global phenomenon that occursas the body accumulates damage in its tissues that the natural repair mechanisms cannot fix. Among these natural repair mechanisms, a few genes that were initially identified for their powerful protective effect against cancer stand out very particularly.
To find out if thegene called Pten, one of the four most powerful anti-cancer genes, could be associated with longer life expectancy, the researchers created transgenic mice with levels of the Pten protein that are twice the usual. As expected, these animals were much more resistant to cancer than their non-transgenic peers. But in addition, they lived 12% longer on average. This effect is independent of cancer resistance. It is not that the mice die of cancer but later, but that those that never develop cancer, in addition, live longer and with fewer symptoms associated with aging. As the researchers write, “Pten has a direct impact on the duration of life“.
What they did not expect to find, and it was a surprising find. is that mice with double doses ofPten they were significantly thinner – 28% on average – and that despite eating more. They are also more sensitive to the hormone insulin, which means a lower risk of developing diabetes, and their liver tolerates a high-fat diet much better than usual. Serrano and his group found the explanation for these differences in the so-calledbrown fat, a type of fatty tissue that, paradoxically, helps the body burn the energy stored in the “love handles”. As Spanish scientists have been able to verify,Pten activates brown fat, which explains the thinness of mice with extra copies of this gene. It is a phenomenon that they have managed to reproduce even with brown fat cells grown in vitro.
At the CNIO they already havea synthetic compound, CNIO-PI3Kiwith the same effect as Pten at the molecular level, which opens the possibility of imagining in the long term “a pill that reinforces our tumor suppressors, ora pill that makes us burn excess nutrients“.
