Targeting obesity: From bench to bedside

Obesity, the global epidemic of the 21st century, is associated not only with fat mass increase but also with an abnormal development of ectopic fat depot linked with obesity complications. The Nutriomics team is focused on the understanding of the patho-physiological mechanisms associated with obesity at its different stages of natural evolution. For this purpose, the Nutriomics team develops and combines large-scale approaches with innovative bioinformatics and complex systems modeling tools in samples collected from well-phenotyped obese subjects with various metabolic disorders and disease stages. This strategy generates hypotheses on putative new cellular and molecular actors, further investigated by in vitro and ex vivo models and generated knockout mice models. By using these approaches, we identified and proved unexpected capacities of adipose tissue i) to accumulate immune cells, ii) to drive low-grade inflammation and iii) to promote extracellular matrix remodeling and fibrosis, which directly contribute to obesity and its complications. Nutriomics studies revealed the importance of the crosstalk between immune system and adipose tissue functions. Nutriomics is now developing program to depict at cellular and molecular levels the cross talk between immune system and adipose cells phenotype, which is poorly understood. Nutriomics is composed of an interactive group of multi-disciplinary PhD, MD-PhD scientists who work in the state-of-the-art facilities.