This technology is a screening method for identifying diabetes treatments or obesity-improving substances by treating skeletal muscle cells with candidate substances and comparing their AMPK phosphorylation levels against a control group treated with dihydrogingerone, which is structurally similar to curcumin. Substances that induce higher AMPK phosphorylation than dihydrogingerone are selected as promising candidates.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for the majority of all diabetes cases and is closely linked to obesity. However, existing oral medications such as metformin, thiazolidinediones, and sulfonylureas have raised safety concerns due to reported side effects like digestive disorders and hepatotoxicity. Furthermore, the lack of clear reference substances to compare and evaluate the blood glucose-lowering efficacy of new candidates at the cellular level has made natural product-based drug discovery inefficient.
This technology uses dihydrogingerone—which has been confirmed to lower blood glucose and improve insulin sensitivity by increasing AMPK activity—as a positive control to relatively evaluate the efficacy of candidate substances under identical cellular conditions. Phosphorylation levels are measured via Western blot using phosphorylation-specific antibodies, and the same framework can be used to screen for both Type 2 diabetes treatments and obesity-improving substances. It can be applied to primary screening for anti-diabetic drugs by pharmaceutical companies, discovery of anti-obesity materials from natural product libraries, and efficacy verification of health functional food ingredients, allowing for the rapid selection of candidates that outperform established reference substances, thereby reducing early-stage development costs and time.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning for exploring the potential of newly discovered AMPK activators and binding proteins as factors for controlling blood glucose and cancer cell apoptosis.
WO2014-112763A1
