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Defective Gene in Mice Could Lead To a Treatment of Obesity: Kiran Chadha

A P Kamath

A strain of mice created by American scientists recently could help evolve a treatment for obese people. An article by Dr Kiran Kumar Chadha and Dr Aseem Anand in the April issue of Nature Genetics discusses the creation of strains of mice that eats high-fat food without gaining weight. According to the researchers, the HNGIC gene in mice helps store fat but a defective version of the gene fails to create storage cells. Thus the mice do not put on weight despite eating fatty food.

If scientists could find a drug that changes the normal HNGIC gene, obesity in human beings could be treated, Dr Chadha told the media recently.

Dr Chadha, a biochemistry professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, is the senior author of the paper. He has also established a company to develop products related to the gene.

Dr Anand, the lead author of the paper, earned his Ph D from UNDNJ last year, with Dr Chadha as his adviser. He has a B Sc in pharmaceutical studies from Sagar University and a master's degree in biotechnology from Jadavpur University.

Dr Chadha, who has a BA (honors) and D Phil in biochemistry from Oxford University, was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University. He began teaching at UMDNJ eight years ago and was named a full professor three years ago.

His enthusiasm for the possibility of obesity treatment worries some researchers.

While Dr Bradford Lowell, an obesity expert at Harvard Medical School, said it would take a lot more work to find out how promising Dr Chadha's approach would be for humans, newspapers reported that some scientists were skeptical.

Dr Rudy Leibel, the obesity expert at Columbia University in New York, was quoted as saying if a person's supply of fat-storing cells were restricted, fat might build up in the liver instead. That could seriously interfere with the liver function, he said.

But Dr Chadha's paper asserts there were no sign of fatty liver build-up in the mice. According to him mice with defective gene develop 10 per cent of the normal amount of body fat. Mice with the new strain were given normal and high-fat diet for nearly six months. According to the researchers the weight gain was the same for both categories.

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