Acomplia Report - News about the diet drug Acomplia (rimonabant)

A growing number of scientists and doctors have become convinced that overcoming the body's imperative to stockpile fat will require an assortment of drugs, mixed and matched in various combinations, and that many patients will be taking these cocktails for years -- perhaps for life -- along with dieting and exercising, according to a front-page report in The Washington Post.

"It's commonplace to use multiple drugs for complex diseases," said Arthur Frank, an obesity expert at George Washington University. "Most people with AIDS take combination drugs. Most people with cancer take combinations of drugs. Most people with heart disease use a combination of drugs. That's probably what we'll have to get to with the management of obesity."

The Post reports that while the drug closest to FDA approval, rimonabant, blocks a pathway in the brain that produces the craving for food, three other drugs have undergone fairly extensive testing.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Axokine suppresses appetite. A small British biotech company, Alizyme PLC, is developing ATL-962, which blocks fat absorption. And Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical's epilepsy drug, Topamax, also helps many people shed weight.

"But most attention is focused on dozens of novel molecules further back in the pipeline," the Post reports. "There are compounds that block a hormone called ghrelin, which the stomach sends to the brain to rev up an appetite, and agents that mimic another hormone, called PYY, that the gut uses to signal that chow time is over. There are drugs that could prevent a belly full of food from being converted into flab, and others that might act as a workout-in-a-pill by firing up the body's natural fat-burning systems."

While many drugs are showing promise, The Post reports that experts say it remains unlikely a single potent agent will be found to cure obesity, given the multiple metabolic signals that humans have evolved to prevent starvation.

"It may take a few years to shake out, but many experts say at least a handful of safe and effective agents probably will emerge, transforming obesity therapy in the same way cholesterol and blood pressure drugs revolutionized the treatment of heart disease.," the Post said.

"As we get more and more drugs in this area, we'll hopefully get better at managing obesity," said Louis J. Aronne, president-elect of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. "I think it's the beginning of a whole new era in the management of obesity."

To read the entire Washington Post article, click here.