Topic: Anorexia

The long-acting GLP-1 analogue semaglutide has revolutionized the pharmacological treatment of obesity, but the brain-mediated mechanisms behind the body weight loss and its most common side effect, nausea, remain unclear. By using select delivery of a Cre-dependent viral vector encoding hM3DGq and mCherry into the dorsal vagal complex (DVC) of TRAP2 mice, we here show that neurons in the DVC that are activated by semaglutide have direct projections to a variety of brainstem and forebrain structures involved in appetite regulation and visceral malaise. CNO-mediated re-activation of DVC neurons

Ghrelin modulates several biological functions via selective activation of the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR). GHSR agonists may be useful for the treatment of anorexia and cachexia while antagonists and inverse agonists may represent innovative options for the treatment of drug addiction. Thus, the identification and pharmacodynamic characterization of new GHSR ligands is of high interest. In the present work the label-free dynamic mass redistribution (DMR) assay has been used to evaluate the pharmacological activity of a panel of GHSR ligands, already reported in the scientific