Speaker Interview: Ben Pope

What are the most significant developments you're currently seeing across obesity drug development, and how are they shaping the field?

The most significant developments right now are the pursuit of novel targets and approaches for improved tolerability and fat-specific weight loss. Most patients can't tolerate GLP1s, so whatever market is currently being captured by them, there's another market out there that's essentially the same size and needs something different.

Despite the progress being made, what do you see as the biggest challenges the obesity industry still needs to address?

Limited tolerability and negative effects on muscle mass and bone density are known problems with GLP1s. A stand-alone solution for one of those problems would rival GLP1s and something that fixes both would supplant them. Drug combinations are also promising if they can counteract the side-effects while maintaining the weight loss.

MelliCell will be presenting at this year's meeting, what will you be sharing and why are you excited for what your work means for the field?

We will be sharing a new approach that targets a shared root of both metabolic and neurological diseases, including obesity, autism, and neurodegeneration. We developed a novel oral pill against this target and it drives fat-specific weight loss in preclinical models. We've also validated a second disease axis for the target in autism, specifically Fragile X, where children are twice as likely to develop childhood obesity. We're excited to be targeting biology with clinical validation and are preparing for clinical trials next year.