Reporter Juliette Smith of KTXL Fox40 News (she holds a master's degree in broadcast reporting and production, University of Southern California) just did an excellent piece on Hammock and his work. It aired Monday, Nov. 25. (Watch news story)
The gist: Newly published research shows that a key regulatory enzyme inhibitor that Hammock discovered can alleviate inflammation linked to health issues caused by a high-sugar diet.
Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, puts it succinctly: "PNAS paper: UC Davis drug candidate in rodents improves gut health from over consumption of sucrose."
He's the co-author of “Metabolomics Reveals Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase as a Therapeutic Target for High-Sucrose Diet-Mediated Gut Barrier Dysfunction,” published in the current edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's the work of a 14-member international team. (See news story on Department of Entomology and Nematology website)
Lead author Jun-Yan Liu, a professor at Chongqing Medical University, China, and a former research scientist (7.5 years) in the Hammock lab, said a soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitor alleviated a gut barrier dysfunction caused by high-sucrose diet in a murine (mouse) model and shows promise in humans.
“We know that a high-sugar diet can lead to multiple serious health problems, and can be a silent killer,” Hammock told us. “We also know that underlying mechanisms and therapeutic strategies to alleviate the results of a high-sucrose diet remain largely unknown. Our research shows that this inhibitor alleviates inflammation and is not acting as an anti-inflammatory compound.”
Indeed, obesity is a major issue. More than 70 percent of Americans are overweight, and 40 percent are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average American consumes 100 pounds of sugar a year, says USDA's Agricultural Research Service. That's a lot of sugar!
“Human translation of this research could be rapid because thesEH inhibitors are currently being evaluated in human clinical trials for other disorders,” said nutrition researcher Guodong Zhang, a member of the UC Davis Department of Nutrition faculty, and a former postdoctoral fellow in the Hammock lab. He was referring to EicOsis, a Davis-based clinical startup that Hammock co-founded in 2011 to alleviate chronic pain without the use of opioids. Its drug candidate, EC5026, has successfully completed Phase 1 human clinical trials, with no side effects.
Exciting? Yes. "The important work identified in this paper indicates potential future therapeutic targets for sEH inhibitors," said EicOsis CEO Cindy McReynolds, a UC Davis doctoral alumna.
Hammock, a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1980, and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has studied sEH inhibitors for 50 years in research leading to drugs that target such diseases as diabetes, hypertension (heart disease), Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. He traces his interest back to his graduate student days in the John Casida lab at UC Berkeley. He and fellow graduate student Sarjeet Gill, now a distinguished professor emeritus at UC Riverside, were researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides when they co-discovered the target enzyme in mammals that regulates epoxy fatty acids.
“We were researching juvenile hormones, and how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly,” Hammock said.
"Science," as Hammock is fond of saying, "is full of surprises."
Indeed. We're looking forward to more science and more surprises...
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