The University of Maryland (UMD) received $1.5 million to study the effects of a well-known molecule on our body's ability to generate heat - copper.
UMD received the funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in order to explore copper's role in the adaptive response to cold, which is connected to metabolism and fat-burning abilities, UMD announced on Thursday.
The grant was awarded to Byung-Eun Kim, associate professor in the Department of Animal and Avian Sciences at UMD, whose preliminary research, that was published in Science, found the properties of a molecule called elesclomol and its role in the transportation of copper throughout the body.
“My new grant takes a new and unique approach for copper transport research,” says Kim. “Thermogenesis, or adaptive heat generation in response to cold temperatures, is a process that is very important for humans and mammals that are warm-blooded and need to maintain body temperature."
Kim's lab discovered the mechanisms in which copper travels through the blood into fat tissues. "Burning fatty acids helps you produce heat when you need it most, and copper seems to be essential to that process. With this grant, we want to explore these mechanisms more to see how it all connects to health problems like hypothermia, and even obesity and diabetes.”
There are two diseases very particularly connected to copper: Menkes disease, whose patients are unable to absorb copper, and Wilson's disease, where the patients are unable to excrete the copper from their bodies. Copper, just like iron, calcium and other minerals, is kept within a strict range in the blood through our body's various methods of absorption, through the food we eat and the cells that take it in, and excretion, through our kidneys, intestinal tract and even skin.
In Menkes disease, the inability to absorb copper can lead to problems in growth and development and in the nervous system. One of the symptoms Menkes patients express is hypothermia or cold body temperatures.
"Since that isn’t the main cause of death, people didn’t pay attention to it," says Kim, "So we began to think about why... Perhaps their adipose fatty tissues aren’t getting enough copper either... That’s how we developed this project to further explore these pathways.”
In his project, Kim and his team found that the elesclomol particle was able to transport copper and cure symptoms of Menkes disease in mice. Could copper transport be the answer for heat metabolism? And if it uses fatty tissue to do so, could elesclomol be used to treat obesity?
“Copper is important for the winter seasons and cold weather, but it may also facilitate your metabolism and fat burning, which means it could have dietary purposes to reduce fat accumulation in those with obesity and diabetes,” stresses Kim. “It could be that the cold sensitivity that is so common in those with diabetes is all directly related to your ability to get copper to your adipose tissues. This grant will help shed light on these mechanisms that are largely unstudied right now.”