Joslin Research Wins Spot on Discover Magazine's Top 100 List

Unlike white fat, which stores energy and comprises most body fat, this good fat, called brown fat, is active in burning calories and using energy. In a paper published last April in The New England Journal of Medicine, C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., Aaron Cypess, M.D., Ph.D., and their colleagues demonstrated that brown fat not only exists in adult humans but is metabolically active. This advance could pave the way for new treatments both for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Discover honored the research by the Kahn lab scientists and their colleagues at Joslin, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital, along with related work by two collaborations among European research groups.

Founded in 1980, Discover Magazine reaches more than 6 million readers and draws more than 1.7 million unique visitors to its Discovermagazine.com Web site each month. The Discover Top 100 is published in its annual Year of Science issue, which is consistently the magazine’s newsstand bestseller. This year, a special double January/February issue begins reaching subscribers this week and goes on newsstands next week.

Joslin Diabetes Center is the world's preeminent diabetes research and clinical care organization. Joslin is dedicated to ensuring people with diabetes live long, healthy lives and offers real hope and progress toward diabetes prevention and a cure for the disease. Founded in 1898 by Elliott P. Joslin, M.D., Joslin is an independent nonprofit institution affiliated with Harvard Medical School. For more information about Joslin, call 1-800-JOSLIN-1 or visit www.joslin.org.