Why does a lizard spit part make medicine last longer?
The C-terminal extension of exendin-4 provides additional metabolic stability when added to GLP-1, while there is minimal effect of truncating exendin-4 in anaesthetized pigs.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists tested how long different sugar-control medicines last in pigs. One medicine comes from a lizard's spit and lasts longer than the body's own version. They tried adding a special tail from the lizard medicine to the human version and saw it lasted longer. But cutting off that tail from the lizard medicine didn't make it work faster.
Surprising Findings
Removing the COOH-terminal extension from exendin-4 does not shorten its half-life.
It was widely assumed that this nine-amino acid tail was the key reason exendin-4 lasts longer than GLP-1. The fact that deleting it has no effect contradicts this intuitive belief.
Practical Takeaways
Drug designers may improve GLP-1-based therapies by adding the COOH-terminal extension from exendin-4 to enhance half-life.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists tested how long different sugar-control medicines last in pigs. One medicine comes from a lizard's spit and lasts longer than the body's own version. They tried adding a special tail from the lizard medicine to the human version and saw it lasted longer. But cutting off that tail from the lizard medicine didn't make it work faster.
Surprising Findings
Removing the COOH-terminal extension from exendin-4 does not shorten its half-life.
It was widely assumed that this nine-amino acid tail was the key reason exendin-4 lasts longer than GLP-1. The fact that deleting it has no effect contradicts this intuitive belief.
Practical Takeaways
Drug designers may improve GLP-1-based therapies by adding the COOH-terminal extension from exendin-4 to enhance half-life.
Publication
Journal
Regulatory peptides
Year
2013
Authors
Lene Simonsen, J. Holst, K. Madsen, C. F. Deacon
Related Content
Claims (4)
A chemical from Gila monster spit lasts longer in the body than a natural hormone because it doesn’t break down as quickly, so it keeps working longer to control blood sugar.
In pigs under anesthesia, adding a small piece from a lizard hormone to a blood sugar hormone makes it last much longer in the body.
Cutting off the end of a hormone called exendin-4 doesn’t make it break down faster in anesthetized pigs, so that part probably doesn’t matter much for how long the hormone lasts in their bodies.
In pigs under anesthesia, certain diabetes-related peptides like exendin-4 are removed from the body only by the kidneys, while others like GLP-1 are cleared by both the kidneys and other body tissues — showing they leave the body in different ways.