2023-09-06 14:18:56
A team of scientists has successfully reversed diet-induced disease in obese mice by delivering the drug directly into the liver.
The research team revealed that encapsulating drugs in a nano-gel material might be an effective way to treat similar diseases such as fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol in the future.
The nanogel technology offers a synthetic thyroid hormone drug called a thyroid mimetic. Thyroid hormones help maintain the balance of metabolism in the liver, but taking thyroid agonists systematically reduces their effectiveness and comes with side effects, according to what was reported by the “Science Alert” website, according to the prestigious scientific journal “PNAS Nexus”.
For further clarification, chemical biomedical engineer S. Tai Theumanavan of the University of Massachusetts, USA, “We realized that we needed to deliver this drug selectively to the liver, because if it moved to other places, it might cause complications.”
Thiumannavan and colleagues used mouse models to ensure that they might specifically target the nanogel carrier at cells in the liver.
The researchers were able to package a thyroid mimetic, called axitrome, into anionic nanogels (ANGs) to administer to obese and control mice daily for five weeks via an intra-abdominal injection. Meanwhile, obese mice were fed a diet high in fat, sugar and cholesterol for 24 weeks before treatment.
In this context, Thiumannavan says, “The treated mice completely lost their gained weight, and we did not see any unwanted side effects.”
Although the mice’s diet was maintained throughout the treatment period, not only did their weight return to normal, their cholesterol levels decreased, as did harmful levels of hepatitis.
“We found that we activate the reverse cholesterol transport pathway, which lowers cholesterol. We believe that the activation of fat oxidation and an increase in the metabolic rate cause weight loss, but more work needs to be done to prove this point.”
To explain the mechanism further, the team says, “After the ANGs enter the liver cells, the exciterome is released when the environment in the liver cells breaks down the bonds in the nanogels. Then the drug binds to a protein that helps regulate gene expression. The ability of axirum to reverse weight gain without causing widespread changes in thyroid hormone levels suggests the potential for thyroid stimulation to treat metabolic conditions such as obesity. which is a public health problem.”
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