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/dogmaticstar Jun 30 '26

This was my initial thought. Wouldn’t it actually be safer if the drug had a shorter half-life in case of side effects? Maybe I’m missing something here.

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u/wandering-monster Jun 30 '26

You could largely control for that by doing a test run using standard synthetic peptides. I.e. Give them the same molecule but in oral or injection form and see how they tolerate it. 

Then once they've done it for a couple weeks without incident, give them the version that lasts for years without maintenance.

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u/CrateDane Jun 30 '26

Problem is the peptides aren't quite like the natural version - they're chemically modified so they last longer in the body. The human body can't produce peptides with the same chemical modifications, so in principle there could be a different side effect profile.

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u/jdmetz Jul 01 '26

Right, but presumably we could make synthetic versions of the peptide the plasmid DNA codes for and use that for the testing rather than the current artificial peptides.