Obese people could be one step closer to a slimmer life, thanks to researchers at the University of Texas and Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, USA.

The treatment — dubbed 'molecular liposuction' — is based on a cancer therapy that destroys the blood vessels that supply the nutrients needed for tumour growth. It starves fat cells of the nutrients needed for their growth, by destroying “those blood cells that served white adipose or fatty tissue” (The Guardian, 10 May 2004).

Reporting in Nature Medicine, Mikhail Kolonin and colleagues found that prohibitin, which regulates blood-vessel growth, is present only on the surface of fat cells, so they “took a fragment of a protein that binds to prohibitin, and attached it to another protein fragment that is used in cancer therapy to kill blood vessels” (Nature Science Update, 10 May 2004). In just 4 weeks, this composite molecule succeeded in producing a 30% reduction in the body weight of mice that had been fed a high-calorie diet.

One of the authors, Renata Pasqualini said, “If even a fraction of what we found in mice relates to human biology, then we are cautiously optimistic that there may be a new way to think about reversing obesity” (BBC News Online, 10 May 2004). Peter Carmeliet, from Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology in Belgium, agrees. “It is an approach with great potential” that “could potentially work even better against obesity than cancer” (Nature Science Update, 10 May 2004).

More research is needed, but encouragingly “the drug didn't seem to cause any toxic side effects and the lost fat did not accumulate in other organs or in the circulation” (NewScientist.com, 10 May 2004).