Understanding How Adipose Tissue Adapts—and Why It Fails

Adipose tissue maintains metabolic health through its remarkable capacity to adapt, remodel, and regenerate in response to physiological demand. Our research investigates how progenitor, stromal, immune, and vascular cell populations coordinate these adaptive processes and how they can be preserved during aging and metabolic stress.

Why This Matters

Healthy tissues continuously adapt to changes in nutrient availability, environmental conditions, and physiological demand. This adaptive capacity allows tissues to maintain function, regenerate following stress, and preserve metabolic health. During aging and obesity, tissues become less responsive to these challenges, contributing to metabolic dysfunction and disease. Understanding how adaptive capacity is established, maintained, and ultimately lost may reveal fundamental principles governing tissue health across the lifespan.

Our Approach

Adaptive capacity emerges through coordinated interactions between progenitor, stromal, immune, and vascular cell populations. Rather than studying individual cell types in isolation, we investigate how these cellular networks organize tissue remodeling, preserve metabolic function, and respond to physiological stress. Using adipose tissue as a model system, our research focuses on uncovering the mechanisms that maintain tissue adaptability throughout life.

Scientific Questions Driving Our Research

Adaptive remodeling

Question: How do tissues maintain the ability to adapt to changing physiological demands?

Summary: Adipose tissue continuously remodels in response to nutrient availability, environmental conditions, and energetic stress. We seek to understand the mechanisms that preserve this adaptive capacity and why tissue remodeling becomes impaired during obesity and aging. We further aim to identify how these mechanisms preserve metabolic resilience and determine why adaptive responses fail under physiological stress.

Progenitor Cell Competence

Question: How do progenitor cells maintain the ability to generate new functional cells throughout life?

Summary: Tissue adaptation depends on progenitor cells that can respond appropriately to physiological challenge. Our research investigates how progenitor competence is established, maintained, and ultimately lost during aging and metabolic stress.

Stromal–Immune Communication

Question: How do cellular communication networks regulate tissue function?

Summary: Adipose tissue function emerges through communication between stromal, immune, vascular, and progenitor cells. We study how these signaling networks coordinate tissue remodeling and how disruption of cellular communication contributes to disease.

Tissue Niches

Question: How do local cellular environments control tissue behavior?

Summary: Cells exist within specialized microenvironments that regulate growth, repair, and adaptation. We investigate how tissue niches coordinate cellular behavior and how alterations in these local environments constrain regenerative capacity and metabolic health.