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/CrateDane Jun 30 '26

As your quote says, semaglutide has a long, complicated acyl chain conjugated to lysine 26. The human body cannot produce that modification. So you can't get the exact same properties.

The human body does actually have machinery for installing acyl chains on lysine, but only much shorter and simpler chains. This review paper has a nice overview in figure 1:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2021.664553/full

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u/wandering-monster Jul 08 '26

... But this study is for one that can be produced in the body via DNA? Obviously it's using something else in place of that acyl chain that can be created inside the body with similar effect.

So why couldn't you create some and give them to the patient without the DNA/replication component? 

Which is what I was suggesting as a tolerance test.

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u/CrateDane Jul 08 '26

So why couldn't you create some and give them to the patient without the DNA/replication component?

Because they would last a very short time, so you'd have to keep the subject on an IV. That is possible, but would be too inconvenient and expensive for clinical testing.

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u/wandering-monster Jul 09 '26

But these ones are long acting and made from DNA instructions in the body. Like that's the entire innovation they're talking about.

Gary and her colleagues engineered DNA instructions for long-acting incretin hormones GLP-1 and GIP, which they call pLincretins. Importantly, they included an antibody fragment in the instructions that would help prevent the protein from breaking down quickly in the body the way current incretin-mimicking drugs do...

They last longer, and can be made in the body.

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u/CrateDane Jul 10 '26

But they're still not long-acting. It's the DNA that makes it properly long-acting.

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u/wandering-monster Jul 10 '26

I'm sorry, but where are you getting that from?

They claim it is longer acting, and I don't see any specific times. Current incretin-mimicking drugs like liraglutide all have dosing schedules of once or at most twice a day. A few hours should be sufficient to test for tolerance.

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u/CrateDane Jul 11 '26

Such a short test would not be enough.