Christine Buske's Blog

Posted by Christine Buske

The Wake Forest University School of Medicine found a link between an enzyme that regulates fat production and cancer in patients. Basically, cancer patients who take Orlistat, an obesity drug, stop tumor development.

The enzyme responsible is the fatty acid synthase, and by blocking it you can effectively prevent tumor growth and promote cell death.

The real breakthrough here is that people had not really linked the ER (a location in the cell where the enzyme is necessary to maintain cell function) is also responsible for keeping tumor cells alive.

Posted by Christine Buske

erase diabetes and obesity from the map! The molecule is called Boc5, and has shown to stimulate insulin function when a person is exposed to higher levels of glucose. The compound also reduced body weight by 20%!

I have to say, if this turns out to work in clinical trials this compound could change the way this world looks, aside from save lives of course.

Finding a compound like Boc5 that can stimulate the production of the hormone GLP1 (glucagon-like peptide1) which is responsible for glucose metabolism, has proven very difficult so far. Liao's team however managed to increase insulin production in laboratory mice when exposed to Boc5. A potentially welcome side effects for humans is that this compound also reduced apetite and therefore promoted weight loss in the same mice.

We will have to see where this leads, but if the study goes to the phase IV stage, we may be in for some very exciting news in the future!

Posted by Christine Buske

Ever wonder what this picture is? Well, here is the video where it came from! These are zebra fish embryos inside the eggs. They were videotaped with a regular video camera (zoomed in) inside a glass beaker.

Video courtesy of the Gerlai Lab and the University of Toronto.