Obesity and the associate metabolic syndrome diseases are becoming more common in both the industrialized and developing world. Over 1 billion adults world wide were overweight in 2002 and at least 300 million of these were clinically obese therefore making obesity treatments a global concern.
Syntaxin's active drug discovery programme is targetting a therapeutic alternative for extreme obesity to major invasive surgery. The development of such drugs will enable the suppression of appetite and balance it with energy expenditure in order to treat extreme obesity.
This is thought to be due significantly to abundance of food and reduced physical activity (WHO Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health, 2003).
The body mass index (BMI) is defined as an individuals weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres. A BMI greater than 30 defines obesity and class III or extreme obesity is defined as a BMI of 40 or greater. Extreme obesity has increased and now affects almost 5% of Americans.
The greater the BMI, the greater the risk of patients exhibiting significant co-morbidities, including diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, many cancers, dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease. Obesity is an extremely expensive medical problem. The annual estimated total cost associated with being overweight in the USA is $117 billion (NIDDKD) and the medical expenditure associated with excess weight in the USA is estimated to be $78.5 billion. It is believed that these costs will increase significantly over the next decade in line with the projected global increase in obesity.
Syntaxin aim to treat the morbidly obese without the risk that is inherent in invasive gastric surgery by targetting obesity treatments via their active drug discovery programme.
Obesity is caused by an interaction of multiple physiological mechanisms making it very difficult to control through a conventional pharmaceutical small molecule, single target approach. The redundancy in the pathways that mediate appetite and energy expenditure, (key factors in obesity) make it highly unlikely that traditional small molecule pharmaceutical approaches can succeed and the drugs available currently to treat obesity are poorly efficacious and are associated with significant side effects.
Because of the lack of effective drug intervention, gastric surgery is currently considered to be the best therapeutic strategy, appropriate for patients with a BMI of greater than 35. Class III (extreme) obesity is associated with a considerable increase in severe co-morbidities and significantly increased surgical risk. It is this extremely obese patient population that Syntaxin aims to help treat with their metabolic syndrome treatment.
Syntaxin has an active drug discovery programme to target the secretion of peptides involved in the development of obesity. Through the use of selectively targeted fusion proteins we will shift the balance of appetite and energy expenditure to create obesity treatments to treat the extremely obese patient population without the need for major invasive surgery.