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Clore Laboratory: News
Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolic Research
28 October 2005 – Mike Cawthorne gives plenary lecture at Australasian Society for Study of Obesity
Mike Cawthorne, Director of Metabolic Research at the Clore Laboratory, University of Buckingham, UK, presented a plenary lecture entitled ‘Current status of anti-obesity drug research – many targets, few drugs’ at the 14th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity (ASSO) held in Glenelg, Adelaide, Australia, 28-30 October 2005.
Obesity is a major public health problem in Australasia. Mike discussed the limited success of currently marketed therapies and outlined the promise of the endocannabinoid antagonist drugs such as rimonabant, which has been submitted to the United States FDA for approval. Agents in phase IIb include the lipase inhibitor ATL-962 and the growth hormone fragment AOD-9604.
The lecture then outlined the approaches being adopted by the biotech and pharma industries as well as academics that have identified a multiplicity of potential therapeutic targets and applied validation techniques to some. Examples of drug targets being examined include melanocortin-4 receptor agonist, MCH-1R antagonists, 5HT2C agonists, gut peptides such as PYY, oxyntomodulin, and exendin, leptin mimetics.
Finally, Mike highlighted studies done by Claire Stocker at Buckingham showing that leptin treatment of pregnant rats resulted in offspring that were programmed to resist obesity and insulin resistance.