Principal Investigator: Anna T. Bauer, MD

Co-Principal Investigator: Dominik Duscher, MD

Institution: Klinikum Rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München

LF Funding History: 2017 Proof of Concept Award

Hypothesis: We hypothesize that hormonal and lymphogenic receptor dysfunction contributes to lipedema pathology.

Project: Highly Parallel Genome-wide Expression Profiling of Lipedema Tissue on a Single Cell Level using Nanoliter Droplets

The aim of our research is to employ single cell analysis to discover gene expression differences and subpopulation aberrations in lipedema fat tissue potentially linked to lipedema etiology and pathology.

Our initial results indicate that the differentiation of lipedema cells in culture is significantly reduced compared to controls. Furthermore, the adipogenic factors released by these cultured cells also differ from controls. These results suggest that lipedema is a complex and poorly understood disease that affects multiple signaling pathways. To better understand the underlying pathology, single cell analysis of whole lipedema fat tissue will be compared to samples from unaffected donors (controls).