Abstract
Obesity is characterized by chronic and low-grade systemic inflammation, an increase of adipose tissue, hypertrophy, and hyperplasia of adipocytes. Adipose tissues can be classified into white, brown, beige and pink adipose tissues, which display different regulatory, morphological and functional characteristics of their adipocyte and immune cells. Brown and white adipocytes can play a key role not only in the control of energy homeostasis, or through the balance between energy storage and expenditure, but also by the modulation of immune and inflammatory responses. Therefore, brown and white adipocytes can orchestrate important immunological crosstalk that may deeply impact the tumor microenvironment and be crucial for cancer establishment and progression. Recent works have indicated that white adipose tissues can undergo a process called browning, in which an inducible brown adipocyte develops. In this review, we depict the mechanisms involved in the differential role of brown, white and pink adipocytes, highlighting their structural, morphological, regulatory and functional characteristics and correlation with cancer predisposition, establishment, and progression. We also discuss the impact of the increased adiposity in the inflammatory and immunological modulation. Moreover, we focused on the plasticity of adipocytes, describing the molecules produced and secreted by those cells, the modulation of the signaling pathways involved in the browning phenomena of white adipose tissue and its impact on inflammation and cancer.
Highlights
There is a strong correlation of cancer and obesity [1,2,3]
Changes of cytokines and adipokines secretion by adipocytes on the adipose organ may influence the immune system response, which is related to a worse prognostic on cancer development
The white adipose tissue has been deeply implicated in cancer, whereas the increase of this tissue is highly related to a pro-tumorigenic microenvironment
Summary
There is a strong correlation of cancer and obesity [1,2,3]. Considering the widespread occurrence of obesity and associated diseases, such as several types of cancer [4], numerous efforts are ongoing to lower the body weight gain through modulating the energy intake and/or expenditure [5]. Location in initially believed that brown adipose tissue was found only in small mammals, hibernating animals the body for heat production (thermogenesis) [18] and it is deeply related to weight loss promotion and newborns. Pink adipocytes are milk-secreting alveolar cells that can arise from transdifferentiation of white adipocytes during pregnancy and lactation These cells are characterized by abundant cytoplasmic lipid droplets, apical surface with microvilli, roundish and large nucleus centrally located, a robust rough endoplasmatic reticulum (RER), Golgi complex, and milk-containing granules. We show the morphological difference between the figure shows theasmorphological between the adipocytes cellsand as well as indicate the capacity adipocytes cells well as indicatedifference the capacity to modulate inflammation the metabolic activity to of modulate adipocytes.inflammation and the metabolic activity of adipocytes
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
