Pharmacotherapy: Disparate bedfellows in a lasting drug union?

摘要

In a recent article in Nature Medicine, Finan and colleagues1 report the development of a new combination approach to polypharmaceutical drug therapy for the metabolic syndrome. Historically, a poly-pharmacy approach involved the separate administration of several individual agents to target a specific disease condition, for example, diet-induced diabetes mellitus in mice.2 Although such combination therapies have provided promising results, they have a number of shortcomings, including complex regulatory approval as well as potency matching. The new study by Finan and co-workers describes a polypharmaceutical approach that involves a conjugate of one peptide hormone and one steroid hormone, namely glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and oestradiol.