14 DAY TRIAL // This is a deadly mental cocktail: while media presents you only models with perfect bodies, obesity is rampant all around you.
In US 33 % of the population is obese and 70 % overweight and the numbers are growing in other western countries, too.
By now, no magic solution has been found: all imply bitter sufferance, from hunger and physical exercise to surgery.
But now Yaniv Linde, a 32-year-old Ph.D. student of Prof. Chaim Gilon in the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem seems to have come up with a practical weight loss solution for the obese persons excluding the hunger method. Linde's team has developed a chemical that imitates the activity of the brain's hormone aMSH, naturally released during eating and which attaches to the brain receptor named MC4R. When the binding passes over a certain level, the brain sends out the message of fullness sensation.
The team made a new method for achieving a peptide (shorter protein) imitating the natural aMSH hormone. The peptide, named BL-3020, resisted to intestinal digestive enzymes when swallowed and reached the blood stream through the intestinal wall. Through blood, it reached the MC4R receptor and activated the "fullness" signal. Taken orally, BL-3020 can curb a person's appetite inducing natural weight loss.
Mice tests showed that a single oral dose of BL-3020 led to decreased food intake over a period of 24 hours. Over a 12-day period of daily dosages, the mice were 40 % lighter than the average mice which did not receive the peptide. The chemical is already patented in Europe and the U.S. and a commercial firm, Bioline RX Ltd. of Jerusalem is currently making the steps towards producing a commercial anti-obesity drug.
Linde has won the Kaye Innovation Award at the 70th meeting of the Hebrew University Board of Governors for this discovery.