Engineering Irisin for Understanding Its Benefits to Obesity
Abstract
Obesity is a common, serious, and costly disorder affecting over one-third of adults in the United States, and the estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008. The prevalence and high health and economic burdens of obesity has also become a serious threat to national security. So it is important to find new drugs and/or managing strategies that are effective in preventing and treating obesity. Previously, a novel exercise-induced hormone has shown an attractive function to induce the loss of body weight, marking it as a promising molecule to fight obesity. This new study aims to engineer this hormone to better capture its benefits for obesity prevention and treatment. Specifically, experiments are proposed to for the first time identify a cellular target that directly interacts with the hormone and transduces its stimulus to induce beneficial cellular responses. Identification of this cellular target will allow discovery and development of small molecules and/or biological molecules to directly mimic and enhance the hormone s benefits to obesity. Furthermore, the hormone will be engineered to survive in the blood for a longer time, therefore offering prolonged therapeutic effects. This work will also be the first to investigate how this hormone is metabolized in the body, providing a solid basis to further optimize its pharmaceutical properties. The engineered long-lasting hormone is significant because it enables direct application of this promising hormone in preclinical and clinical studies to examine and improve its therapeutic benefits that can be exploited to fight obesity.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 04, 2016
- Source ID
- W81XWH1510196
Entities
People
- Yousong Ding
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of Florida