EXPERIMENTAL DRUG MIMICS EXERCISE AND MAY HELP WITH WEIGHT LOSS

-

 

EXPERIMENTAL DRUG  MIMICS EXERCISE AND MAY HELP WITH WEIGHT LOSS



A new kind of drug, tested in mice, shows promising new results that could lead to the development of a new weight-loss pill that mimics exercise.

The new compound, developed and tested by a University of Florida professor of pharmacy and his colleagues, leads obese mice to lose weight by convincing the body's muscles that they are exercising more than they really are, boosting the animals' metabolism.

It also increases endurance, helping mice run nearly 50% further than they could before, all without the mice lifting a paw.

The drug belongs to a class known as "exercise mimetics," which provides some benefits of exercise without increasing physical activity. The new treatment is in the early stages of development but could one day be tested in people to treat diseases like obesity, diabetes, and age-related muscle loss. The research comes as drugs like Ozempic have provided a breakthrough in reducing appetite, helping treat these metabolic diseases.

But, the new drug, SLU-PP-332, doesn't affect appetite or food intake. Nor does it cause mice to exercise more. Instead, the drug boosts a natural metabolic pathway that responds to exercise. In effect, the drug makes the body act like it is training for a marathon, leading to increased energy expenditure and faster metabolism of fat in the body.

"This compound is basically telling skeletal muscle to make the same changes you see during endurance training," said Thomas Burris, a professor of pharmacy at UF who led the recent research into the new drug.

"When you treat mice with the drug, you can see that their whole body metabolism turns to using fatty acids, which is very similar to what people use when they are fasting or exercising," Burris added. "And the animals start losing weight."

With a team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and St. Louis University, Burris published his findings Sept. 22 in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

The new drug targets a group of proteins in the body known as ERRs, which activate some of the most important metabolic pathways in energy-gobbling tissues like muscles, the heart, and the brain. The ERRs are more active when people exercise but have proven challenging to activate with drugs.

In another paper published in March, the researchers reported that they had successfully designed SLU-PP-332 to boost the activity of the ERRs. They also observed that the compound allowed normal-weight mice to run for 70% longer and 45% further than mice not receiving the drug.

In their latest research, the team tested the drug on obese mice. Treating obese mice twice a day for a month caused them to gain 10 times less fat than untreated mice and lose 12% of their body weight. Yet the mice kept eating the same food and no longer exercised.

"They use more energy just living," Burris said.

In another work the Burris lab is about to publish, the researchers have seen evidence that the compound can also treat heart failure in mice by strengthening the heart muscle.

So far, the drug hasn't generated any severe side effects. The next step in developing SLU-PP-332 into a drug candidate will be to refine its structure, ideally making it available as a pill instead of an injection. Then, the drug would be tested for side effects in more animal models before jumping to human trials.

Other exercise mimetics have been tested, but none have made it to market, partly because it takes years to develop a new drug. Targeting obesity with a drug has historically been difficult because of how complex obesity is. That was until Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro developed to treat diabetes, which also caused people to lose weight. This development increased interest, research, and funding for drugs that could treat these metabolic diseases through different biological pathways.

Burris says the greatest hope for the new drug might be maintaining muscle mass during weight loss -- which often threatens lean muscle mass -- or during aging when the body naturally responds less strongly to exercise. But it will take more research to understand the drug's full potential.

"This may be able to keep people healthier as they age," Burris said.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PEOPLE WITH OBESITY BURN LESS CALORIES DURING THE DAY

-
Image
  PEOPLE WITH OBESITY BURN LESS CALORIES DURING THE DAY Building on prior studies with healthy-weight participants, the new research includes different body sizes.         New research indicates that weight influences how and when bodies burn energy. An Oregon Health & Science University study published in the journal  Obesity  found people who have a healthy weight use more energy during the day, when most people are active and eat, while those who are obese spend more energy during the night when most people sleep. The study also found that during the day, those with obesity have higher levels of the hormone insulin -- a sign that the body is working harder to use glucose, an energy-packed sugar. "It was surprising to learn how dramatically the timing of when our bodies burn energy differed in those with obesity," said the study's first author, Andrew McHill, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the OHSU School of Nursing and the Oregon Institute of ...
Read more

WHAT CAUSES ITCHING, AND WHAT STOPS IT?

-
Image
  WHAT CAUSES ITCHING, AND WHAT STOPS IT?         It can be a relief to scratch the occasional itch, but when itch gets out of control, it can become a severe health problem. How does the body know when to stop? Scientists at UC San Francisco are getting close to an answer. In a breakthrough that could transform how doctors treat conditions from eczema to allergies, they have discovered a feedback loop centered on a single immune protein called IL-31 that causes the urge to itch and dials back nearby inflammation. The findings, published on October 13th in  Science Immunology , lay the groundwork for a new generation of drugs that interact more intelligently with the body's innate self-regulating ability. Previous approaches suggested that IL-31 signals itch and promotes skin inflammation. However, the UCSF team discovered that nerve cells, or neurons, that respond to IL-31, triggering a scratch, also prevent immune cells from overreacting and causing more ...
Read more

A VEGAN DIET IMPROVES CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY

-
Image
  A VEGAN DIET IMPROVES CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY         In a study with 22 pairs of identical twins, Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues have found that a vegan diet improves cardiovascular health in as little as eight weeks. Although it's well-known that eating less meat improves cardiovascular health, diet studies often need to be enhanced by genetic differences, upbringing, and lifestyle choices. By studying identical twins, however, the researchers were able to control for genetics and limit the other factors, as the twins grew up in the same households and reported similar lifestyles. "Not only did this study provide a groundbreaking way to assert that a vegan diet is healthier than the conventional omnivore diet, but the twins were also a riot to work with," said Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor and a professor of medicine. "They dressed the same, they talked the same, and they had a banter ...
Read more