Scientists develop a new drug candidate to treat diabetes. A novel hormone combination has been created by a research team from Helmholtz Munich, the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), and Novo Nordisk for the potential treatment of type 2 diabetes in the future.
The benefit of combining Tesaglitazar with GLP-1 is that the Tesaglitazar only penetrates the tissue with GLP-1 receptors. This increases the effects on sugar metabolism while lessening the side effects of tesaglitazar. Scientists have already successfully tested the new drug in animal studies. The study was recently published in the journal Nature Metabolism. Type 2 Diabetes, Tesaglitazar enhances glucose and fat metabolism in type 2 diabetic patients. It increases insulin sensitivity by acting on two receptors inside the cell nucleus. This was demonstrated in phase 3 clinical trials. However, tesaglitazar has side effects such as kidney damage. However, in order to utilize the drug therapeutically, the researchers employed a trick: they biochemically combined tesaglitazar with the gastrointestinal hormone GLP-1. As a result, the combined drug can only work on cells and tissues that have GLP-1 receptors.
The new drug has already been successfully tested in animal studies: “The sugar metabolism of obese and diabetic male mice improved to a far greater extent compared with treatment using only the GLP-1 hormone or tesaglitazar alone – and with no damaging adverse effects to the liver or kidney,” says Professor Kerstin Stemmer, one of the lead authors of the study. The substance was particularly effective in increasing glucose tolerance levels. Only minimal doses of the new drug were required to achieve sustainable improvement of glucose metabolism. “This drug has great potential for the acute treatment of elevated blood sugar levels associated with type 2 diabetes,” says Aaron Novikoff, another lead author of the study. The researchers now want to investigate whether this drug also has the potential to treat humans with type 2 diabetes and whether the efficacy of this new combination therapy can be optimized further using biochemical modifications.
Source: This news is originally published by scitechdaily