Developing a treatment for obesity based on natural appetite suppression

Research by Professor Bloom and his team has identified the role played by gut hormones in appetite control, and has been the starting point to develop a new drug to tackle obesity.

Running time: 3 min 43 s.
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Over 30 000 deaths a year are caused by obesity in England alone and yet the need for safe and effective anti-obesity therapies is largely unmet. An award provided from the £91 million, five-year Seeding Drug Discovery initiative, to Professor Steve Bloom, one of the world's leading obesity experts, provided an opportunity to address this problem. A hormone found in the gut that naturally suppresses appetite was the starting point to develop a new drug to tackle obesity.

Research by Professor Bloom and his team identified the role played by the gut hormones in appetite control. These hormones are released when a person eats to indicate to the brain that a person is full. In particular, the researchers were interested in pancreatic polypeptide (PP) which their clinical data suggested could cause appetite suppression. With funding from the Seeding Drug Discovery initiative in 2007, Professor Bloom and his team have developed a novel, synthetic form of PP that can cause a significant reduction in food intake and body weight in mice, and the lead compound, PP1420, entered Phase I clinical trials in mid 2010. If successful, the proposed research may lead to a treatment within five to eight years.