A small molecule that turns off the genes responsible for making fat cells has been discovered by a team of Baylor College of Medicine and Japanese researchers.

Dubbed “fatostatin,” the molecule blocks a protein in the cell that starts the cascade of events that turns on the 63 genes in the nucleus responsible for the generation of fat cells, said Salih Wakil, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at BCM.

The report appears in the journal Chemistry and Biology.

“That is the exciting thing,” said Wakil. “This goes to the most basic level of the expression of genes that cause fat.”

When mice with a predisposition to be obese received fatostatin, they lost weight, their cholesterol and fatty acid synthesis decreased. They had less resistance of insulin (a factor in diabetes), and their livers, which were pale because of fat buildup, returned to normal.

Drugs that lower cholesterol already exist, but they block only a single enzyme in the fat-generating pathway. Fatostatin stops the process at the beginning, said Wakil.

Wakil said one of his colleagues, Motonari Uesugi, now of Kyoto University in Japan, discovered the compound by screening a library of an estimated 10,000 compounds.

Lutfi Abu-Elheiga, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at BCM was also a major contributor.

Source: bizjournals.com