Hunger-controlling brain cells may offer path for new obesity drugs
We have identified two new populations of cells in the brain that potently regulate appetite," says Alexander Nectow, first author of the paper, published in Cell on July 27. The two types of cells, located in a part of the brainstem called the dorsal raphe nucleus, are potential targets for new drugs to treat obesity by controlling the hunger signals that drive the search for an d consumption of food. The new findings are the latest evidence that eating is a complex biological behavior mediated by multiple sites in the brain. They also offer a possible solution to a problem that has dogged previous efforts to address obesity at the neuronal level. In 1994, Jeffrey Friedman, Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and head of Rockefeller's Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, launched a new era in obesity research by discovering a hormone called leptin, which acts on neurons in the brain's hypothalamus region to suppress hunger. Injections of the hormone have been shown to promo...