EAGER: Multispectral Optical Molecular Sensing of Brown Fat

该EAGER项目的总体目标是开发一种安全且相对廉价的基于空间偏移漫反射光谱（SODRS）的多光谱分子传感光学技术，能够无创、可靠地检测棕色脂肪，并测量其在人体中的质量和代谢活性。直到最近，人们才相信成年人没有棕色脂肪，直到最近在贝斯以色列女执事医疗中心（BIDMC）、乔斯林糖尿病中心（JDC）、哈佛医学院和荷兰马斯特里赫特大学进行的研究表明，超过一半的成年男性和女性体内可能有足够的棕色脂肪来燃烧掉导致肥胖的大量白色脂肪。研究还表明，棕色脂肪可以发挥重要的积极作用，因为肥胖的人和高血糖的人比瘦人和血糖正常的人有更少的棕色脂肪。如果棕色脂肪确实在成年人中很常见，那么找到促进其激活的方法可能为预防或治疗肥胖、糖尿病和心血管疾病提供一个重要的范例。在为期一年的EAGER试点项目中，他们将开发和建造一个SODRS分子传感仪器的原型，能够通过大约1厘米的人体表面组织检测棕色脂肪。

1144025PerelmanThe overall objective of this EAGER project is to develop a safe and relatively inexpensive multispectral molecular sensing optical technique based on Spatially Offset Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (SODRS), capable of non-invasive, reliable detection of brown fat and measurement of its mass and metabolic activity in humans. Until recently it was believed that adults did not have brown fat and only recent studies performed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Joslin Diabetes Center (JDC), Harvard Medical School and at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands show that more than half of adult men and women may have enough brown fat in their bodies to burn off substantial amounts of white fat responsible for obesity. The studies also suggest that brown fat can play an important positive role, since obese people and people with high blood sugar have less brown fat than lean people and people with normal blood sugar. If indeed brown fat is common in adults, then finding ways to promote its activation could provide an important paradigm for preventing or treating obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. During the proposed one year EAGER pilot project they will develop and build a prototype SODRS molecular sensing instrument capable of detecting brown fat through approximately 1 cm of superficial tissue in humans.