Hosts: Mignon Fogarty and Adam Lowe
Transcript: This episode originally aired December 27, 2005
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
FULL TRANSCRIPT
PREVIOUS: WHY BELLY FAT IS BAD
Mignon: Well, there's also some interesting news on drug trials. For some people it's very hard to regulate their food intake, and so pharmaceutical companies of course are hard at work on that. It's a growing market. A company called Arena pharmaceuticals just had positive results from a phase IIb trial on a diet drug called APD356, a very exciting name right now, I'm sure when it gets farther along they will give it a snazzy name. But what it does is activate receptors called 5HT2C receptors, and it enhances a feeling of satiety. So they are hoping that – and they've seen positive results – so it seems like this drug helps people feel full.
Adam: I think that is different than other drugs that were used in the past. Because often stimulant drugs were used to help with dieting that had a lot of negative and potentially dangerous side effects. So there's hope that this pathway working in a way to help people feel full will have a lot of the benefits without the negative side effects.
Mignon: That's right. And this specific receptor is actually a serotonin receptor. And it's the same receptor that was the target of the drug combination “phen-fen”, the Phentermine and fenfluramine ...which actually resulted in cardiovascular lesions. You know, people have those heart valve problems from phen-fen. But, Arena believes that so far their drug hasn't show any of those problems, and targets the receptor with a little bit more specificity than those older drugs did.
Adam: I was thinking back to the old days when people would try to take stimulant drugs to reduce appetite and burn off calories.
Mignon: That's been determined to be pretty much unhealthy.
Adam: Yeah, that's quite dangerous.
Mignon: Well, so far Arena says their drug has been generally well tolerated and it's just a phase II trial, so it is a small trial and it will probably be years before they complete a phase III trial and this drug would become available; but it's an interesting step building on previous drugs that were known to work but had dangerous side effects. So hopefully they can tweak that drug a little bit and make it safe and retain it's efficacy and then provide help to people who have trouble dieting.
NEXT: CALORIE RESTRICTION, SIR2, RED WINE, AND LONGEVITY
