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by rdruxn
1180 days ago
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> 2. Glucose is transported in intestines via a glucose-sodium antiporter protein. Maybe we can find a drug that blocks this and you can eat as much sugar as you want! (Turns out you’ll have uncontrolled diarrhea if you do). It's very cool! It's the SGLT protein. It's actually a sodium-glucose co-transporter and is why gatorade is so effective! It's the perfect mix of salt, sugar, and water to take advantage of that very protein (where salt goes, water follows). And yes there is a drug that targets these - it's the SGLT inhibitors and they're very in vogue right now. Ozempic and Mounjaro are the two big ones in the news right now. They act on the SGLT I (found only in the kidney) so that you urinate more sugar. They don't act on the SGLT 2 (only found in the gut) but other medications in that class act on both. But congratulations and alas! You nearly invented gatorade and a multi-billion dollar diabetes and weight-loss drug. Hardly bone-headed ideas. |
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Importantly, the issue why my ideas were boneheaded was that typically there’s a lot of unknown side functions and ramifications in biology which are easily overlooked. Glp-1 based drugs weren’t discovered by deliberate hypothesis testing. Sglt2 inhibitors might be but given the number of trials it took in attacking metabolic syndrome using “logic” (avoid fat, avoid sugar, inhibit fat uptake, eat sugar substitutes, etc). This just eeems like a fluke more than merit of following simple logic into complex hormonal systems.
This is true in all medicines. Except antibiotics almost no effective medicine was “invented” by applying first principles the way you would in physics, even if initially it looked like that’s how it worked. Take chemotherapy for example. If the drug works effectively by killing all dividing cells completely, it clearly should kill you, but it doesn’t. It just kills cancers. But that’s because turns out our immune system plays a pivotal role in chemotherapy effectiveness.