Soon, pill to help obese patients lose tenth of their weight in just 1 month!

Washington, Nov 10 (ANI): An experimental drug that selectively destroys the blood supply of fat tissue is being considered as an opportunity by scientists to provide a new avenue for anti-obesity medication.

Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center treated "spontaneously" obese rhesus monkeys with the drug for four weeks and found that they lost on average 11 percent of their body weight.

Body mass index (BMI) and abdominal circumference (waistline) also were reduced, while all three measures were unchanged in untreated control monkeys.

"Development of this compound for human use would provide a non-surgical way to actually reduce accumulated white fat, in contrast to current weight-loss drugs that attempt to control appetite or prevent absorption of dietary fat," Renata Pasqualini, co-senior author of the study, said.

Previous attempts to treat obesity have predominantly focused on drugs aimed at suppressing appetite or increasing metabolism, but these efforts have been hampered by their toxic side-effects.

The new drug designed by the MD Anderson group includes a homing agent that binds to a protein on the surface of fat-supporting blood vessels and a synthetic peptide that triggers cell death, as soon as their blood supply gone, fat cells are reabsorbed and metabolized.

In earlier preclinical research, obese mice lost about 30 percent of their body weight with the drug, Adipotide, which acts drug acts on white adipose tissue, the scientific name for the unhealthy type of fat that accumulates under the skin and around the abdomen, and is a disease and mortality predictor.

"Most drugs against obesity fail in transition between rodents and primates," Pasqualini said.

"All rodent models of obesity are faulty because their metabolism and central nervous system control of appetite and satiety are very different from primates, including humans. We're greatly encouraged to see substantial weight loss in a primate model of obesity that closely matches the human condition," she said.

The study has been published in Science Translational Medicine. (ANI)