A semaglutide ‘miracle’: repurposing diabetes drug for weight loss
- July 7, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
A semaglutide ‘miracle’: repurposing diabetes drug for weight loss
Subject : Science and technology
Section: Health
Concept :
- People who have been struggling to cope with being overweight or obese and trying to shed a few kilos, over the past few years, have it seems been offered a silver bullet.
- While initially on trial for once-a-week diabetes therapy, an unexpected side effect – weight loss – swept the drug (semaglutide) off the shelves of a pharmacy and put it in the celebrity section on social media.
- Initial results seemed like a fantasy, as stunning weight loss was recorded in those put on the drug as a treatment for diabetes, and celebrities, even those without diabetes, did not take too long to cotton on, starting oral and injectible semaglutide doses to lose weight.
Semaglutide
- Semaglutide is a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) drug that increases the secretion of insulin (which helps decrease blood sugar levels) after a meal while reducing the production of glucagon (which helps increase blood sugar levels).
- Besides regulating glucose levels in the body, the drug also aids in weight loss, lowers the risk of hypoglycemia, and improves heart health and kidney function.
- The drug was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017.
- According to a study, semaglutide specifically showed greater weight loss in subjects than other GLP-1 RA drugs. It roughly reduced body weight by 4kgs, as compared to other drugs which saw reductions of 1.4-2.5 kgs.
- Apart from regulating glucose, it also increases gastric emptying time, meaning food takes longer to pass through the gastrointestinal tract and it makes you feel full for a longer period of time
Drug repurposing (DR)
It is (also known as drug repositioning) is a process of identifying new therapeutic use(s) for old/existing/available drugs. It is an effective strategy in discovering or developing drug molecules with new pharmacological/therapeutic indications. In recent years, many pharmaceutical companies are developing new drugs with the discovery of novel biological targets by applying the drug repositioning strategy in drug discovery and development program. This strategy is highly efficient, time saving, low-cost and minimum risk of failure.
It maximizes the therapeutic value of a drug and consequently increases the success rate. Thus, drug repositioning is an effective alternative approach to traditional drug discovery process. Finding new molecular entities (NME) by traditional or de novo approach of drug discovery is a lengthy, time consuming and expensive venture. Drug repositioning utilizes the combined efforts of activity-based or experimental and in silico-based or computational approaches to develop/identify the new uses of drug molecules on a rational basis. It is, therefore, believed to be an emerging strategy where existing medicines, having already been tested safe in humans, are redirected based on a valid target molecule to combat particularly, rare, difficult-to-treat diseases and neglected diseases.