A new slimming drug designed to shrink fat tissue has been shown to potentially be more effective than bariatric surgery – though it totally failed to work as the scientists expected.
When the company was founded in 2008, it intended to create drugs that block the formation of blood vessels, a similar technique to that of cancer-fighting medications. They hoped that the process would shrink fat tissue, rather than work on the receptors in the brain like other slimming pills in development.
However, over the past year the company developing the drug, Zafgen, discovered that the mechanism did not work as they thought it would, having no effect on angiogenesis, or the formation of new blood vessels.
Nonetheless, the company discovered that the drug did encourage extreme weight loss and shrinkage of fat tissues in mice and rats. They believe that the effects are so profound they could be comparable to surgery such as gastric banding.
It has been suggested that the drug works by encouraging the cells in an obese person’s fat tissue to release fatty acids into the blood stream, where they are burned up as energy. Another possibility is the byproducts of fatty acids, ketone bodies, can be suppressed due to the high amounts of insulin in an obese person’s blood. The drug seems to unlock the fatty tissue to fatty acids can be released, as well as encouraging the production of ketone bodies, allowing released fat to be burned up.
The company is now launching its first clinical trial in Australia, involving 40 obese women. The main goal is to see if the drug is safe, well tolerated and can be absorbed by the body. The participants will receive injections of the medication twice a week.
If the initial clinical trial is successful then Zafgen will launch larger trials, as well as seek to raise more capital to fund research into the experimental drug.