BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Burning the fat

March 25, 2010 7:00 AM UTC

A team led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco has identified sirtuin 3 as a critical regulator of fatty acid oxidation, a process by which the body burns fat.1 The findings have been licensed to the Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. unit of GlaxoSmithKline plc, which already has a discovery-stage program aimed at activating the enzyme to treat metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, it could be challenging to pharmacologically activate the hard-to-reach mitochondrial protein in vivo.

Sirtuins are a family of protein deacetylases that have been linked to metabolic regulation.2 For example, sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), a homolog of SIRT3 found mostly in the nucleus, regulates a range of metabolic pathways and is the target of Sirtris' SRT2104. The small molecule SIRT1 activator is in Phase II trials for type 2 diabetes...