Jan 4, 2024 01:55 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023...camidazole
EXCERPTS: Scientists have long known that exercise is arguably the best medicine of all. Studies have found that exercising can slash the risk of dementia by up to 45%, along with maintaining strong bones, supple blood vessels and muscle fibres that replenish themselves rather than fading away.
[...] But what if the drug industry could help mitigate this? From the UK to Japan, scientists have spent years searching for exercise mimetics – pills or perhaps injections that could replicate some of exercise’s beneficial effects on the body. The signs suggest we are starting to get close.
“We know that exercise releases all these hormones which show up in the blood,” says Christiane Wrann, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Because scientists are still unsure which exercise hormones are the most beneficial, the ExPlas trial is taking a broad approach. Injecting blood plasma from people who exercise regularly is a simple way of transferring all these potentially beneficial hormones to patients. “The Norwegian idea is to take the plasma as the drug and give it to those who need it,” says Wrann.
But another, more focused approach is also gaining traction. In 2012, scientists discovered a hormone called irisin that is released by muscles during exercise – a messenger chemical that communicates with various parts of the body. In November 2023, Wrann and her colleagues demonstrated that irisin can reach the brain and clear the toxic amyloid plaques involved in Alzheimer’s disease, a big breakthrough in understanding how exercise helps shield the brain from dementia.
Wrann and others have now created a spin-off company, Aevum Therapeutics, with the ultimate aim of commercialising irisin as the world’s first exercise-based treatment; perhaps through mimicking the hormone with a drug, tweaking genes so that they generate more irisin, or simply injecting more of it into the body.
[...] researchers such as Wrann insist that the main target group for exercise drugs is not the time-poor or the lazy, but rather disabled and elderly patients who have become housebound or bedridden through enforced inactivity.
[...] Wrann says it is unlikely that we will ever have a medicine that universally replicates the full benefits of exercise... Instead, scientists envisage a future with many different therapies all based on biological pathways identified from studying exercise, some for osteoporosis and others for protecting the brain... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Scientists have long known that exercise is arguably the best medicine of all. Studies have found that exercising can slash the risk of dementia by up to 45%, along with maintaining strong bones, supple blood vessels and muscle fibres that replenish themselves rather than fading away.
[...] But what if the drug industry could help mitigate this? From the UK to Japan, scientists have spent years searching for exercise mimetics – pills or perhaps injections that could replicate some of exercise’s beneficial effects on the body. The signs suggest we are starting to get close.
“We know that exercise releases all these hormones which show up in the blood,” says Christiane Wrann, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Because scientists are still unsure which exercise hormones are the most beneficial, the ExPlas trial is taking a broad approach. Injecting blood plasma from people who exercise regularly is a simple way of transferring all these potentially beneficial hormones to patients. “The Norwegian idea is to take the plasma as the drug and give it to those who need it,” says Wrann.
But another, more focused approach is also gaining traction. In 2012, scientists discovered a hormone called irisin that is released by muscles during exercise – a messenger chemical that communicates with various parts of the body. In November 2023, Wrann and her colleagues demonstrated that irisin can reach the brain and clear the toxic amyloid plaques involved in Alzheimer’s disease, a big breakthrough in understanding how exercise helps shield the brain from dementia.
Wrann and others have now created a spin-off company, Aevum Therapeutics, with the ultimate aim of commercialising irisin as the world’s first exercise-based treatment; perhaps through mimicking the hormone with a drug, tweaking genes so that they generate more irisin, or simply injecting more of it into the body.
[...] researchers such as Wrann insist that the main target group for exercise drugs is not the time-poor or the lazy, but rather disabled and elderly patients who have become housebound or bedridden through enforced inactivity.
[...] Wrann says it is unlikely that we will ever have a medicine that universally replicates the full benefits of exercise... Instead, scientists envisage a future with many different therapies all based on biological pathways identified from studying exercise, some for osteoporosis and others for protecting the brain... (MORE - missing details)