Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The pursuit of effective therapies for weight loss has been under way for decades?long before obesity was even recognized as a public health crisis. Yet, compared with other areas of drug development, R&D for weight loss therapies has seen remarkably little advancement?and innovation. Rather, the space has been riddled with drama and plagued by disappointing failures.
Billions of R&D dollars later, there remain shockingly limited treatment options for what is now an exploding epidemic. It is estimated that more than two-thirds of U.S. adults and nearly one-third of U.S. children are either overweight or obese. Medical-related expenses attributable to obesity are projected to top $344 billion by the year 2018.
We must crack the code on obesity drug development. But to accomplish this we need to radically rethink our understanding of obesity and redirect our R&D efforts accordingly.
By and large our approach to understanding and hence treating obesity has been driven, and simultaneously hampered by, a gross oversimplification of what in reality is a highly complex disease. In fact, even acknowledging that obesity is a disease rather than merely a consequence of poor lifestyle choices is a relatively nascent and still-debated concept.
http://www.genengnews.com/gen-articles/obesity-proving-complicated-and-personal/4170/
Billions of R&D dollars later, there remain shockingly limited treatment options for what is now an exploding epidemic. It is estimated that more than two-thirds of U.S. adults and nearly one-third of U.S. children are either overweight or obese. Medical-related expenses attributable to obesity are projected to top $344 billion by the year 2018.
We must crack the code on obesity drug development. But to accomplish this we need to radically rethink our understanding of obesity and redirect our R&D efforts accordingly.
By and large our approach to understanding and hence treating obesity has been driven, and simultaneously hampered by, a gross oversimplification of what in reality is a highly complex disease. In fact, even acknowledging that obesity is a disease rather than merely a consequence of poor lifestyle choices is a relatively nascent and still-debated concept.
http://www.genengnews.com/gen-articles/obesity-proving-complicated-and-personal/4170/
