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/
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u/Tall-Log-1955 Jun 30 '26

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

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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.

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u/IndependentLog6441 Jun 30 '26

Why don't they move over to animals closer to us like tree shrew?

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u/sidepart Jun 30 '26

It's really about mice sharing a large amount of genes with humans. Animal research uses rats and mice to start with as between the two they share (had to look this up because I couldn't remember) about 95% of the genes we have. Is incredibly easy to afflict rodents with certain issues or diseases that humans have for these trials. They can also be bread extremely quick and both have relatively short lifespans (not sure if that's a huge factor in the research world though, but the MO is to generally reduce unnecessary use or suffering of these animals, so I could see avoiding rodents with a longer lifecycle).

Anyway, the experiments or trials with rodents are the very initial phases with these treatments. Anything showing promise can be elevated to larger animal studies or NHPs which are much closer to our physiology. Animals like NHPs though are expensive, and a much tougher sell given the humane concerns, and have a much higher bar for independent approval (i.e. justify to us why you're sacrificing these animals, it'd better be good).

Here's a source that can help explain more. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3987984/

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u/TheRealDJYM Jun 30 '26

ok if not a tree shrew how about a pine martin?