Keep your mice in shape
Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2002 8:54 am
Drug Makes Fat Mice Thin
By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson
Feb. 19, 2002 -- Everyone knows the equation: eat less + exercise more = lose weight. It always works if you've got lots of will power. Now a new drug promises to help.
It's called C75 and it's still a long way from human tests. Why the excitement? In a new study, C75 makes fat mice thin -- but has no effect on lean mice. Its discovery is a giant step toward helping people regain -- and maintain -- normal weight.
"We are closing in on a powerful biological signal in weight control," says study leader M. Daniel Lane, PhD, professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in a news release.
The findings appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The body is very good at controlling how much energy it gets, uses, and stores. When you need energy, you get hungry. As you eat, the breakdown of your food gives off a chemical signal to the brain. When the brain gets enough of this signal, you stop being hungry. Another set of signals tells your body whether to burn off the food or to store it as fat.
In some people, this system doesn't work very well. And when people become obese, the system breaks down.
C75 seems to affect all three parts of this system. It makes mice lose their appetites. It makes them burn more calories. And keeps them from storing food energy as fat.
Genetically engineered obese mice don't have the brain chemical that tells them to stop eating. When they get C75, however, they lose the urge to eat. They also start burning more energy and stop storing up fat.
Lean mice that get C75 also lose their appetite. But after a day, the drug stops working. They get their appetites back even if they keep taking the drug. For obese mice it's a different story -- the drug keeps on working. It seems to stop working only when they become lean, although this finding has to be confirmed.
There's still a lot to learn about how C75 works, and nobody knows if it will ever be safe enough for human use. Still, the findings point toward ways to fix the energy-balance system when it breaks down.
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At last! Just what we've all been waiting for: a way to keep our mice slim and trim!
By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson
Feb. 19, 2002 -- Everyone knows the equation: eat less + exercise more = lose weight. It always works if you've got lots of will power. Now a new drug promises to help.
It's called C75 and it's still a long way from human tests. Why the excitement? In a new study, C75 makes fat mice thin -- but has no effect on lean mice. Its discovery is a giant step toward helping people regain -- and maintain -- normal weight.
"We are closing in on a powerful biological signal in weight control," says study leader M. Daniel Lane, PhD, professor of biological chemistry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in a news release.
The findings appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The body is very good at controlling how much energy it gets, uses, and stores. When you need energy, you get hungry. As you eat, the breakdown of your food gives off a chemical signal to the brain. When the brain gets enough of this signal, you stop being hungry. Another set of signals tells your body whether to burn off the food or to store it as fat.
In some people, this system doesn't work very well. And when people become obese, the system breaks down.
C75 seems to affect all three parts of this system. It makes mice lose their appetites. It makes them burn more calories. And keeps them from storing food energy as fat.
Genetically engineered obese mice don't have the brain chemical that tells them to stop eating. When they get C75, however, they lose the urge to eat. They also start burning more energy and stop storing up fat.
Lean mice that get C75 also lose their appetite. But after a day, the drug stops working. They get their appetites back even if they keep taking the drug. For obese mice it's a different story -- the drug keeps on working. It seems to stop working only when they become lean, although this finding has to be confirmed.
There's still a lot to learn about how C75 works, and nobody knows if it will ever be safe enough for human use. Still, the findings point toward ways to fix the energy-balance system when it breaks down.
*******************************************
At last! Just what we've all been waiting for: a way to keep our mice slim and trim!
Seeing that obesity is a common problem among cloned animals, a way too keep our mice slim is much needed!