Obesity vaccine enters clinical trial

May 19, 2005 – It is one of the world’s greatest ironies that while a billion of the planet’s citizens are quite literally starving, another billion are eating themselves to death. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than one billion people worldwide are overweight and of these at least 300 million are clinically obese. The cost of obesity in terms of morbidity, mortality and medical expenditure is enormous. WHO reports that developed countries spend 2-7% of total health care costs on obesity-related problems. Which is why the announcement this week from a small Swiss biotechnology company has such massive ramifications. The company is beginning trials of a drug which it believes will not only suppress the appetite and assist in losing weight, but keep the weight off in the long term. Immunodrug candidate CYT009-GhrQb is effectively a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of obesity.

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