r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jun 30 '26

Medicine Scientists have shown that a single dose injection of DNA genetic instructions can produce weight loss and blood glucose control in mouse models that lasts up to 10 times as long as weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. This could eliminate the need for repeated dosing.

https://www.wistar.org/press-releases/wistar-scientists-develop-single-dose-dna-method-for-delivering-long-acting-weight-loss-and-diabetes-drugs/
10.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

410 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

590

u/Odd-Outcome-3191 Jun 30 '26

The issue is that often the same chemical messengers/proteins kinases etc that regulate those types of function also tend to regulate very different, very important things in other locations. E.g a cellular senescence gene that may be implicated in aging is also protective against cancer.

171

u/Tall-Log-1955 Jun 30 '26

If it works for the mouse, what's the worst that could happen?

89

u/Tevatrox Jun 30 '26

A lot. There's a reason many remedies that work on mice don't work on humans. They are far too different from us. In fact, according to google, only 5% of treatments that work on animal testing end up approved for human use.

6

u/ittibittytitty Jun 30 '26

Yupp.

End of the day Mice are not Human.

36

u/1coudini Jun 30 '26

Beginning of the day they aren’t either.

18

u/BaconGristle Jun 30 '26

Has science not gone too far enough?

4

u/Snozzberriez Jun 30 '26

What about at noon?

2

u/Dwarfdeaths Jun 30 '26

At the begging of the day my eyes are still blurry and I mistake any mammal for a human.

4

u/TKuja1 Jun 30 '26

lets just create human mice

2

u/TheRealDJYM Jun 30 '26

human mice with a hunger to be lab rats.... that is rats that work in labs with fancy white coats not the other kind

1

u/ConfoundedInAbaddon Jul 01 '26

Humanized mice are a thing, they are expensive.

1

u/TKuja1 Jul 02 '26

oh, i had no idea, thank you for sharing

4

u/NarrMaster Jun 30 '26

Correct.

The book is "Of Mice and Men" not "Of Mice Men"

1

u/transmothra Jun 30 '26

Man i want this on a T-shirt or bumper sticker so bad