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Lessons from a prior obesity company: what Zafgen taught me about development risk
In late 2005 I founded my first company, an obesity drug developer called Zafgen. This was still long before the highly weight-negative GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic became available. No truly effective drugs for obesity were available at the time, and those that were (like sibutramine and orlistat) had their own challenges with safety and side effects that limited their success. The need for new agent...more
Beyond Activation: Why Building Brown Fat May Succeed Where Waking It Up Failed
Beyond Activation: Why Building Brown Fat May Succeed Where Waking It Up Failed
In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, several large pharmaceutical companies tried to develop obesity drugs that would acutely activate thermogenesis - the body’s process of dissipating energy as heat. The idea was to increase resting metabolic rate and turn stored fat into heat by stimulating the activity ...more
Muscle Matters: The Lean-Mass Problem with Appetite-Based Weight Loss
GLP-1 receptor agonists have revolutionized obesity treatment, making significant weight loss pharmacologically achievable for millions of patients. However, these medications come with notable trade-offs. From a clinical perspective, one of the most concerning is the simultaneous loss of muscle mass. Studies show that when patients lose weight on GLP-1 medications, more than 30% of the lost ...more
Energesis’ Energy Expenditure Approach to Obesity: Brown Fat, GLP-1s, and the Competitive Landscape
Energesis
GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide and tirzepatide have changed the obesity treatment landscape. They have helped many people lose meaningful weight and have made obesity one of the most important areas in medicine today.
But we do not believe they are the end of the story.
The GLP-1 therapies work by reducing appetite and food intake. This can be effective, but it addresses only one side of the body-w...more
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