14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists have known for a long time that a causal connection exists between diabetes and obesity, but new drugs and therapies developed in the lab have always focused on treating either one of the two, and not both at the same time. However, as Reuters reports, a new medicine apparently has the ability to make lab mice lose weight, while keeping their diabetes in check, and forcing them to lose cholesterol too. Essentially, what the new drug does is stop the body from producing fat, by releasing the energy directly from food. Its creators named it fatostatin.
In charge of the new research were experts Salih Wakil, from the Baylor College of Medicine, in Texas, the United States, and Motonari Uesugi, from the Kyoto University, in Japan. The full results of their experiments appear in the latest issue of the scientific journal Chemistry and Biology. The creators of the new substance hope that, once they learn how to apply its effects on humans, they will help manage obesity, diabetes and cholesterol at the same time. Such a combined approach could yield more results than treating each of them independently, the team says.
Basically, the new drug works at a genetic level. A large number of genes is activated when people eat beyond their bodies' normal ability to absorb nutrients. These genes have to do with controlling the deposition of excess food in the storage tissue, which becomes known and visible on the outside as fat. Fatostatin deals with the genes, and prevents them from encoding their usual proteins, which then trigger the whole chain of events. “Here, we are tackling the basics. I think that is what excited us,” Wakil said in an interview for the news outlet.
“Fatostatin blocked increases in body weight, blood glucose, and hepatic (liver) fat accumulation in (genetically) obese mice, even under uncontrolled food intake [conditions],” the two authors wrote in the Chemistry and Biology paper. They also revealed that the new drug affected a grand total of 63 genes inside the rodents' bodies. The substance has already been patented, and the team now awaits for commercial partners (pharmaceutical companies) to present their collaboration offers.