Research

Hormonal

Deletion or inhibition of MKK6 in white adipose tissue increases energy expenditure and protects against diet-induced obesity and diabetes by enhancing thyroid hormone (T3)-mediated browning of white fat.

This research suggests that blocking MKK6 in fat tissue could help treat obesity by making fat burn more energy, similar to brown fat. While not a current human treatment, it highlights thyroid hormone sensitivity and fat metabolism as key targets for future obesity drugs.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Deletion of Mkk6 increases T3-stimulated UCP1 expression in adipocytes, thereby increasing their thermogenic capacity... These results indicate that MKK6 is a central regulator of WAT browning and is a possible target for obesity treatment.
Nuria Matesanz et al. · Nature Communications · 2017

Why this rating

Strong evidence from multiple mouse models (global knockout, conditional knockout, shRNA knockdown) and human tissue analysis, though human clinical trials are not yet reported.

Source

MKK6 controls T3-mediated browning of white adipose tissue

Nuria Matesanz et al. · Nature Communications · 2017

DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-00948-z

mechanism_onlyCited 67×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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