Molecule Cuts Off Fat's Food Supply

hords writes "New Scientist reports a magic bullet that destroys the blood vessels that feed fat tissue enables mice to lose a third of their body weight. They first screened millions of peptides and identified one that binds to a membrane protein found only in the blood vessels supplying white fat. Then they hooked this up to another peptide that triggers cell suicide or apoptosis. Mice that had grown obese on a high-calorie diet were given daily injections of the combined peptide they lost 30 percent of their body weight in four weeks, whereas control mice given the two peptides separately grew even fatter."

Comments

I wouldn't hold my breath

[JGski]

The original, original article's (scientific paper) author reminded a Reuter's interviewer that there as a good chance that this won't pan out for humans. There have been plenty of previous "fat factors" that only worked on rodents and didn't transfer to primates.

The genomes of rats, mice and humans have a lot of key differences in the basic metabolic pathways. That recent study explains a lot about why rat and mouse studies can be so wrong about human responses to drugs and things.

Hey, fathead!

[Goon Number 1]

What's my brain made out of? Oh yeah, Fat. Let's mess with that, shall we?

Re:Hey, fathead!

[Molina the Bofh]

Sorry, dude, but it's completely unrelated.

While the brain does use some fats to isolate neurons, it does not get it from fat cells. In fact, there are no fat cells in the brain.

Fat cells are cells are specialized cells that store fat. That's their job. The fat takes up to 85% of the cell volume.

If 30% of the fat cells are destroyed, that only means that the body's fat storage was reduced by 30%. This probably would be excess fat that the body would never use.

Reducing total fat is not harmful to the brain, unless it's reduced to drastically low levels (like this.

Re:Yurgh

[Too Much Noise]

If you look for a more accurate story (New Scientist? did /. fall so low already?), you'll see they're well aware of potential problems. From this yahoo story:

When fat mice were injected with the new "fat-zapper" every day for a month, they all slimmed down to normal weight with no visible side-effects, the researchers reported in the June issue of Nature Medicine.

But they stressed the experiment is still in the very early stages and it affects a function found in virtually all cells -- meaning it has a high potential for serious side-effects.

"I am trying to un-hype this," said Dr. Wadih Arap of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who led the research.

Different fat

[MachDelta]

The article said the drug only targets white fat. Virtually all of the "important fat" in your body (eg: membranes around the heart, blood vessels, brain, myelin, etc) is "brown fat". White fat (actually yellow), on the other hand, is the stuff that you find in love handles, beer bellies, fat-asses, and our other beloved yet misshapen body parts. The big difference between to two in your bodies eye is that white fat is for storage, whereas brown fat is for other things like protection and temperature regulation. Brown fat tissue doesn't really get "fat" (you'd be dead if it did) because thats not it's purpose.

So as long as this drug really only does affect white fat, it should (theoretically) work. It certainly wouldn't be a miricle drug though. For one thing, it seems like it would attack fat indiscriminately. Your body stores fat in preferred locations, but theres no way to tell the drug to "just" go after your gut. It would eat fat away from your entire body - not just your problem areas. Imagine how many women would bitch after their boobs shrunk, their arm muscles were exposed, but their ass was still too big?

The other major problem with it is that it wouldn't be permanent. Fat cells don't have a specified size - they'll grow or shrink depending on the bodies need. So even if you kill off half your fat cells one week, theres no guarantee that next week your remaining fat cells will just start growing 2 times bigger (this is why lyposuction 'doesn't always work'). This means the drug probably wouldn't work for your "typical fat American kid", because their diets won't change. Sure, they could slice off a few pounds with a pill, but if they keep eating unhealthy their bodies will just pile more into their existing cells. If they go on the drugs repeatedly (or permanently), they could wind up with serious health problems - or worse.
The best audience for this type of thing would be people who eat healthy, but for whatever reason can't loose fat, or want to loose more of it. People like bodybuilders (for that even more ripped look), or possibly women who haven't lost pregnancy fat after birth, or something. For the majority of us who snack on chocolate cake and pop between our 6 course meals, it probably wouldn't work.
Sorry to ruin everyones day :)

Woah, not to fast, guys!

[Oncogene]

I'm honestly a bit concerned as to how they plan to apply this to human subjects. Prohibitin isn't restricted to human white fat. It has other applications in the human body; it's a potential tumor suppressor protein, for one. If they cut this thing out, I'd bet my left arm that we'd see instances of breast cancer shoot up.