Treatment of Obesity with Celastrol

In 2008, World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 1.4 billion adults worldwide were overweight. Obesity is a major cause for the development of debilitating conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, all of which reduce life quality as well as lifespan.

Despite all modern advances in medicine, an effective drug treatment for obesity has not yet been found. Leptin has been discovered for two decades, which created hopes for treatment of obesity. However, development of leptin resistance has been a big obstacle, mitigating a leptin-centric treatment of obesity.

In this study published in "Cell", Liu et al. from Harvard Medical School identified Celastrol as a powerful anti-obesity agent by using in silico drug-screening methods. Oral administration of Celastrol has several effects in diet-induced obesity (DIO) mice, such as decrease in food intake, reducing ER stress, enhancing glucose homeostasis and losing body weight. Moreover, they also found that Celastrol has no or minimal effect in ob/ob or db/db mice, both of which were deprived of Leptin signaling. Taken together, these observations suggest that Celastrol is a leptin sensitizer and elucidate the existence of leptin resistance in obesity.

This research clearly shows that Celastrol could be an effective therapeutic approach for treatment of obesity. How exactly does Celastrol create the leptin-sensitizing effect? Celastrol treatment alone led to a significant increase in STAT3^Tyr705 phosphorylation, indicating that the increased levels of p-STAT3^Tyr705 was sufficient to elevate leptin sensitivity. arigo provides phospho-STAT3 Antibody Duo (ARG30027; ARG30028) for the study of STAT3 phosphorylation in leptin sensitivity. NF_kB signaling pathway has also been shown to play a role in obesity. With arigo NF_kB Activation Antibody Panel (ARG30205), scientists can investigate if NF_kB signaling pathway is activated and involved in obesity. Leptin, one of the best known hormone markers for obesity, exerts pleiotropic actions on multiple organ systems. arigo offers high quality Leptin ELISA kit (ARG80126) as a common and useful tool for the study of obesity.