to exactly what happens at the level of the skin

Like all the actors in the sector, YSL beauty infiltrated the wave of new stamped formulations "innovation" pounding at the announcement of the summer. According to the latest data of the Federation of perfume industries (2004), care products represent nearly 2 billion euros and about one-third of the total market of cosmetics and perfumes in France. On the segment of the specific products for the body, which absorb approximately 350 million euros, the slimming weighs increasingly heavy, some 100 million euros, worn by an annual growth rate that increased tenfold the past two years to exceed the 30 mark. To address this market, YSL beauty researchers collaborated with Professor Gérard Ailhaud, Director of the development of the adipose tissue of the CNRS laboratory at the University of Nice Sophia - Antipolis.

Stem cell reservoir

Long regarded as a simple unsightly fat storage organ, adipose tissue proved, since little, be an endocrine gland and a real reservoir of human stem cells can give rise to cardiac, vascular, bone or muscle cells, according to the environment in which they occur. "We have led to this result after twenty years of work on the fat of the mouse and rat, specific cells Professor Gérard Ailhaud." We used these stem cells to better understand the mechanisms of deformation of fat cells and to try to control their increase. Because, as we know today, their population may increase the lifetime of an individual until a very advanced age.

This team of the CNRS research was able to reproduce, in cell culture and, for the first time, continuous, the process of transformation in greasy normal human cells, i.e. to exactly what happens at the level of the skin. "We thus have a unique exploration tool that allowed us to accurately identify the means of control of the keys to the expansion of the fatty tissue stages," says Professor Gérard Ailhaud.

Why is it important to act upon the birth of the fat cells, also called adipocytes Because the development of adipose tissue combines two distinct phenomena: the increase in the volume of existing cells and the recruitment of new cells, which need to know, is irreversible. In other words, a fat cell formed at the subcutaneous level is permanently embedded under the skin knowing that each of them is a reservoir of fat ready to engulf and store any excess food.

Block process

Hence the interest of search compounds able to prevent the irreversible character, which is acquired by the fat cells at the early stages of their transformation, well before the maturation phase. To do this, from compounds liquidated for their pharmacological properties, researchers have selected their study model, in cell threshold conditions, two assets which can block the process of differentiation of Adipocyte (see below).

Is it to say that we today master in depth development of adipose tissue "We have still only a partial view of its training and regulation processes." "The human préadipocytaire line, that we were able to be with isolated from human adipose tissue, stem cells we opens many perspectives of exploration, from the initial phases of its development as related to its maturation later events," says Professor Gérard Ailhaud. Several research programs are already underway to refine the performance obtained, to improve the control of the process of thinning.