Inside Precision Medicine July 18, 2024
Using drugs to “prime” the melanocortin system could improve the effectiveness, without increasing side effects, of popular diabetes and weight-loss medications, according to new research from the University of Michigan. In one study, mice given a GLP-1 drug in combination with an MC4R agonist or MC3R antagonist showed up to five times more weight loss and reduced feeding than mice receiving only the weight loss drugs.
“We found that activating the central melanocortin system hypersensitizes animals to the effects of not just GLP-1s, but to every anti-feeding hormone we tested,” said U-M physiologist Roger Cone, PhD, who led the research.
The study appeared this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Naima Dahir, a postdoctoral research fellow in Cone’s lab,...
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