History and future perspectives of adipose tissue macrophage biology

Tomonobu Kado; Ayumi Nishimura; Kazuyuki Tobe

doi:10.3389/fphar.2024.1373182

History and future perspectives of adipose tissue macrophage biology

Front Pharmacol. 2024 Mar 18:15:1373182. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1373182. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Tomonobu Kado^#¹, Ayumi Nishimura^#¹, Kazuyuki Tobe¹

Affiliation

¹ First Department of Internal Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Science, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Macrophages contribute to adipose tissue homeostasis; however, they are also thought to be responsible for insulin resistance in obesity. Macrophages, which were oversimplified in past methodologies, have become rather difficult to understand comprehensively as recent developments in research methodology have revealed their diversity. This review highlights recent studies on adipose tissue macrophages, identifies controversial issues that need to be resolved and proposes a scenario for further development of adipose tissue macrophage biology.

Keywords: adipose tissue; adipose tissue macrophage; diabetes; macrophage; obesity.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (22K16423 to AN, 22K08647 to TK, and 21H04861 to KT), grants from the Japan Diabetes Foundation and Boehringer Ingelheim to TK, grants from the Japan Diabetes Society to AN, JST Moonshot R&D Grant Number JPMJMS2021 to KT, and grants from the Japan Foundation for Applied Enzymology (a grant for Front Runner of Future Diabetes Research to TK).