Science

Currently, diabetes is treated with drugs that control blood sugar levels, but it not these drugs that treats diabetes itself. It is said that the world’s diabetic population is over 460 million, with an adult prevalence of 9.3%, and an estimated 1 in 11 people being diabetic. Type II diabetes accounts for 90% of all diabetes. Insulin resistance has been recognized as being due to factors including a high fat diet, lack of exercise, and obesity. It not only brings about type Ⅱ diabetes but also is the basic pathology of a variety of diseases such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and arteriosclerosis ¹²⁾. Furthermore, NASH increases the risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer. NOSTER is proceeding with the work of selecting candidate substances from gut microbial beneficial metabolites (postbiotics) for drug discovery with the goal of developing pharmaceutical agents that enable sufferers to completely recover from chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, and mitigate cascade-like triggering of the onset of other diseases.
HYA is functional fatty acid that is produced from linoleic acid, a major component of vegetable oils, by the metabolism of gut microorganisms, and NOSTER is at the forefront of research to elucidate its functions and initiate clinical applications as part of collaborative research with academia. Pioneering research by Professor Jun Ogawa professor and Associated Professor Shigenobu Kishino at Kyoto University led to the elucidation of the metabolic pathways of linoleic acid in gut microbes and they found that food-derived lipids and linoleic-acid-derived metabolites exist in the intestine ¹¹⁾. Moreover, Professor Ikuo Kimura at Kyoto University discovered that HYA improves insulin resistance through GPCRs (G protein-coupled receptors) expressed in the intestine from mouse model experiments and mechanisms that control blood glucose levels ¹³⁾. NOSTER is working on the development of new drugs with HYA for typeⅡ diabetes, NASH, and inflammatory bowel disease.

Reference
11) Kishino, S. et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 29, 17808-17813 (2013).
12) Machado, M.V. et al. PLoS One 7, e31738 (2012).
13) Miyamoto, J. et al. Nat Commun 10, 4007 (2019).