Role of LXRs in control of lipogenesis

  1. Joshua R. Schultz1,3,
  2. Hua Tu1,3,
  3. Alvin Luk1,
  4. Joyce J. Repa2,
  5. Julio C. Medina1,
  6. Leping Li1,
  7. Susan Schwendner1,
  8. Shelley Wang1,
  9. Martin Thoolen1,
  10. David J. Mangelsdorf2,
  11. Kevin D. Lustig1, and
  12. Bei Shan1,4
  1. 1Tularik Inc., South San Francisco, California 94080, USA; 2Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA

Abstract

The discovery of oxysterols as the endogenous liver X receptor (LXR) ligands and subsequent gene targeting studies in mice provided strong evidence that LXR plays a central role in cholesterol metabolism. The identification here of a synthetic, nonsteroidal LXR-selective agonist series represented by T0314407 and T0901317 revealed a novel physiological role of LXR. Oral administration of T0901317 to mice and hamsters showed that LXR activated the coordinate expression of major fatty acid biosynthetic genes (lipogenesis) and increased plasma triglyceride and phospholipid levels in both species. Complementary studies in cell culture and animals suggested that the increase in plasma lipids occurs via LXR-mediated induction of the sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1 (SREBP-1) lipogenic program.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • 3 These authors contributed equally to this work.

  • 4 Corresponding author.

  • E-MAIL shan{at}tularik.com; FAX (650) 825-7400.

  • Article and publication are at www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.850400.

    • Received September 13, 2000.
    • Accepted October 2, 2000.
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