Although exercise and a healthy diet are typically advised as the solutions to weight problems, the Obesity Society focused on drug treatments for obesity during this weekend’s Annual Scientific Meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.
More than 64 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese, according 1999 to 2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
“This is a big story — in more ways than one,” Valerie Goldman, a research nutritionist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said.
Barbara Corkey, the editor-in-chief of Obesity — the Obesity Society’s official journal — and director of the Obesity Research Center at Boston University School of Medicine, described the effectiveness of a new drug by AdipoGenix — a research company that develops drugs for obesity treatment.
“Nobody expected that we should ever be that successful,” Corkey said.
“I think we just need good drugs,” Alain Baron, senior vice president of research at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., said.
Baron also detailed the “highly risky and very, very expensive and difficult” process of developing new drugs.
Baron said the cost of drug development, from conception of the idea to production of the drug itself, is approximately $1.7 billion “when factoring the cost of failures.”
“[This is] not viable from a business standpoint,” he said.
Baron explained some of the development methods used by Amylin Pharmaceuticals — including modifying natural hormones and making them available in drug form.
“[These are] very exciting concepts,” Andrew Greenberg, co-chair of the Annual Meeting Planning Committee, said.
To ensure all of the information presented during the lectures would be objective and “free from commercial bias,” the Obesity Society required each speaker to state any conflicts of interest that would affect his or her views. If a lecturer was employed by a particular pharmaceutical company, for example, his or her opinions would be considered biased.
In addition to focusing on education, the Obesity Society financed grants for young scientists “to help launch their careers.”
The five-day-Annual Scientific Meeting consisted of lectures, exhibits and workshops. The event, held at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston, continues through Tuesday.