AMSBIO reports how researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, USA) have used their 10E4 Heparan Sulfate (HS) antibody in pioneering obesity research to quantify the role of HS in the process of intercellular mitochondria transfer to macrophages. In recent published research**, researchers from the Brestoff and Teitelbaum Labs demonstrated that adipose-tissue resident macrophages acquire mitochondria from adjacent adipocytes using HS. This process occurs in healthy conditions but is impaired in obesity. Further they have shown that genetic disruption of mitochondria uptake by macrophages reduces energy expenditure and increases diet-induced obesity in mice, indicating that intercellular mitochondria transfer to macrophages mediates systemic metabolic homeostasis. Obesity is an increasingly common metabolic…