Metabolic Diseases

Metabolic diseases, including obesity, fatty liver, diabetes, and dyslipidemia, have become a major public health problem with increasing prevalence worldwide. There is a huge unmet clinical need for the development of new therapeutic approaches. 

Hitgen’s experienced team have expertise in drug discovery and development for metabolic diseases. The biology team has developed a wide range of relevant assays across a number of targets, such as nuclear receptors, proteases kinase, GPCRs, and etc. The Pharmacology team can supports the program with a variety of effective cell-based and animal models used to evaluate drug effectiveness. 

Services for metabolic diseases drug discovery and development:

In vitro Assays for Metabolic & Lipid Diseases 

• Phenotypic Functional Assays 

• Primary cell isolation

• Adipocyte differentiation

• Lipogenesis assay (3H-Acetate)

• Glucose uptake (colorimetric)

• FA uptake (fluorometric)

• Lipase activity assay

• Beta-Oxidation (3-hydroxybutyric acid level)

Animals Models：

Obesity and Diabetes

• Streptozotocin induced diabetes Mouse/Rat

• Spontaneous diabetes db/db，ob/ob Mouse

• Spontaneous diabetes ZDF Rat

• High fat and high sugar diet induced Mice

• MCD diet induced NASH mice

• Hypoxanthine-induced gouty arthritis  Mouse

• Adenine induced Hyperuricemia Rat

• ConA induced liver Mouse

Dyslipidemia

• High fat/cholesterol/fructose diet induced mice

• APOE Hyperlipidemia mouse

• Nonalcoholic fatty liver 

Hyperuricemia

• Hypoxanthine-induced gouty arthritis Mouse

• Adenine + ethambutol induced Rat Liver Fibrosis

• TAA-induced Rat

• Porcine serum induced Rat Liver Fibrosis

Measurements for the animal diseases models:

• Glucose tolerance test (IPGTT or OGTT)

• Insulin tolerance Test (ITT)

• glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) test 

• Serum glucose level 

• Serum cholesterol and triglyceride level 

• Serum insulin level

• Serum FFA level

• Serum inflammatory cytokines level

• Liver fat content

• Liver enzymes AST and ALT

• Histopathology: increased steatosis, ballooning, inflammation, Mallory body and Fibrosis in NASH model