Stromal control of healthy and pathological adipose tissue remodelling – ADIPO-FIB

The visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is a highly dynamic organ that responds to nutrient and environmental stress to regulate host metabolism. In response to excess caloric intake, pathological VAT remodeling leads to adipocyte hypertrophy, a shift toward pro-inflammatory type I immunity and ECM accumulation, resulting in adipose tissue fibrosis. Obesity-induced fibrosis limits VAT expansion/plasticity and is a major driver of adipose tissue dysfunction and metabolic diseases such as insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The biological process leading to pathological ECM remodeling /fibrosis remain poorly understood, limiting therapeutic interventions. Here, we will use complementary experimental approaches, including novel reporter and deleter mice for adipose stromal cells, type 1 and type 2 immune cells, as well as single cells transcriptomic approaches and metabolic investigations to investigate, in vivo, the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating stroma-immune interactions in healthy and pathological adipose tissue remodeling (in high fat diet, with a focus on obesity-induced fibrosis) and the impact on host metabolism.