What if you can lose weight with medications that don’t let you lose lunch at the same time? New research suggests that this may be possible.
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Kentucky and other institutions say they have found a potential new way to suppress people’s appetite and treat obesity — without causing nausea or vomiting commonly experienced by Semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy). In early animal experiments, the team’s experimental drugs seemed to be working as expected.
Half-lubin and similar drugs mimic natural GLP-1 hormones, which are very important in regulating our insulin production and hunger. These drugs are effective in helping people lose weight, and their tradeoff is a high possibility of gastrointestinal side effects. Caroline Geisler, an assistant professor at Uky’s Pharmacy College, said there is a clear need to improve obesity treatment.
Geisler and her team have been exploring a special strategy for treating obesity, involving a protein called octamethyl peptide or ODN. ODN is produced by glia in the brain, specialized cells that support neurons. But glia is not just the support force of the brain, ODN is important for controlling our hunger.
“Now we know [glia] Playing an important role in sensing and communicating the body’s state, we hope that by targeting glial signaling molecules, we can participate in many energy regulation pathways in the brain and avoid the side effects of nausea and vomiting. Geisler told Gizmodo.
The researchers first tested their hypothesis by passing the ODN directly to the hindbrain of rats. Once treated, the rats lost weight and improved blood sugar control. When they blocked ODN signaling in rats, the animals responded weakly to GLP-1 treatment (indicating that their effects were at least partially bound to ODN).
Finally, they indirectly gave mice, rats and sh to experimental drugs derived from ODN (called TDN). In mice, TDN improved blood sugar control; in rats, it resulted in weight loss without nausea or vomiting; in Shrews, animals commonly used to test for exercise diseases and vomiting, the drug did not trigger vomiting at all. The drug does not appear to have any significant effect on the heart rate, movement and temperature of the animals.
“This article shows for the first time that giving smaller versions of ODN at the periphery can still effectively improve weight and metabolic control without side effects,” Geisler said.
The team’s findings, published Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine, are now just proof of concept. There are still many questions about how ODN works in the brain to curb our appetite and control blood sugar. Although TDN appears to result in stable weight loss in animals at least without abatement, it is also possible to further optimize ODN-based drugs for medical use.
Still, researchers hope that this potential new drug class will match or even surpass the effectiveness of today’s GLP-1 therapy, while reducing the hassle. They are now planning to develop such drugs for testing in humans. “We have an optimistic schedule and we can prepare to start clinical trials within two years,” Geisler said.
Researchers are not the only researchers working to introduce the next generation of researchers to improve obesity and diabetes treatments. However, it is very likely that many people will sign safe weight loss pills that don’t require bar bags.
