A Pola1, S Tan2, T Y. Keong3, Z Zhou2, S A. Sadananthan1, G Venkatesh3, S Ishino4, Y Nakano4, M Watanabe4, T Horiguchi4, B Zhu2, S Sendhil Velan3
1Singapoe Institute for Clinical Sciences, A*STAR, Singapore; 2Takeda Singapore Pte Ltd, Singapore; 3Laboratory of Molecular Inaging, Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, Singapore; 4Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Japan
Current measurements to evaluate the anti-obesity effects are focused on the decrease of the body weight and visceral fat which takes longer time to show the effect, therefore a biomarker to predict anti-obesity effects for short term is of interest. In this study, we investigated the variation in body weight, intra-hepatic lipid, intra-myocellular lipid and visceral fat, in a series of studies using calorie restriction and an anti-obesity drug (Sibutramine) treatment for 4 weeks in a diet induced obese rat model. Our findings demonstrate that MRI/MRS can be utilized to evaluate the therapeutic potential of novel drugs in rodent models of obesity and diabetes.