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Sue Green

A Hong Kong-born biochemist and his Australian research team have developed a drug they believe can help obese people lose weight, which has access to a potential multi-million-dollar market.

  Having completed animal trials, biochemistry professor Frank Ng of Melbourne's Monash University is seeking investors and negotiating with European and United States companies to conduct human trials and develop his drug.

  Mr Ng has been a visiting professor at Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry for three years.

  But, he says, there are too few fat people in China to test his development. The real problem - and the potential fortune - is in the West.

  The professor says the drug, developed as a result of his work on diabetes, is unique and has none of the potentially harmful side-effects of other obesity treatments.

  Despite this, he has failed to attract funds from Australian drug companies which concentrate on marketing rather than research and development.

  The drug - at this stage known only as AOD9401 - is made from a synthesised part of a human growth hormone molecule. 'We copy part of the molecule and that part does nothing else but specifically regulate fat metabolism,' Mr Ng explained.

  'It is extremely specific and targets fat tissue. It does not work through other systems, for example, the gastric system.'   The drug stimulates the metabolism to make fat tissue more active - that is, it burns it down - as well as inhibiting fat accumulation.

  Existing obesity treatments all have adverse effects, Mr Ng says. For instance, most interact with the central nervous system to achieve effects such as appetite suppression. Others prevent nutrients being absorbed as well as fats.

   'My drug is different,' Mr Ng says. 'It is unique.'   He explained what research still must be completed: 'We have to . . . do the toxicology study, and then do human trials. We have done one species, the rats and mice, and we want to do pigs and sheep.'   Following earlier publicity, Mr Ng has patients in Melbourne who are willing to take part in trials, as well as a file of volunteers throughout Australia. Meanwhile, a team at Melbourne's Pharmacy College is experimenting with ways that people could take the drug - for instance, in pill, implant or inhalation form - and how it could be mass produced. And a team in the university's pharmacology department is working on toxicology studies.

  Most of these will be complete by mid-year, Mr Ng says.

    Mr Ng says changing lifestyle and diet are the best ways to lose weight, rather than taking drugs. But for the heavily obese, activity can be almost impossible.

  'When they are more mobile and agile than you take them off [the drug] and help them watch their lifestyles and do some physical work. But if they are too obese they cannot be mobile.'   He says the drug would be administered under supervision: 'People might be trying to use it for cosmetic reasons, for instance if an agency wants anorexic models.'   But some research work has found that rodents of normal weight did not lose much when given the drug, suggesting abuse would be difficult, he says.

  After schooling in Hong Kong, Mr Ng gained his university degrees in Canada and the US and performed his post-doctoral work in England, where he studied diabetes.

  By the 1980s he had moved into treatment of diabetes in Australia and its prevention - a major path to stopping obesity.

  But companies worldwide are spending millions of dollars to find the right treatment, and he fears that if his drug is not developed soon US researchers working in a similar area may get there first.

  'The next stage is to try to see this on the market to help obese patients,' Mr Ng says.

  'So then I can retire. I want to go to Hong Kong or somewhere. I feel it is making some contribution to society if this comes out.' 



A drug that gets to the source of fat