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  • IN BRIEF

Extracellular vesicles target neuronal AMPK

  1. Sarah Crunkhorn
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Inhibition of AMP-activated protein kinase alpha 1 (AMPKα1) in mice — specifically in the steroidogenic factor 1 (SF1) neurons of the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMH) — increases sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity, which stimulates brown adipose tissue thermogenesis, elevating energy expenditure. To exploit this therapeutically, Milbank et al. generated neuronal-targeted small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) loaded with a plasmid encoding an AMPKα1 dominant negative mutant targeted to VMH-SF1 neurons. In diet-induced obese mice, tail-vein injection of the loaded sEVs reduced body weight independent of feeding, without side-effects.

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Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 20, 898 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41573-021-00184-7

References

  1. Milbank, E. et al. Small extracellular vesicle-mediated targeting of hypothalamic AMPKα1 corrects obesity through BAT activation. Nat. Metab. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-021-00467-8 (2021)

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