A protein capable of preventing diabetes

University of Louvain discovers a protein capable of preventing diabetes and obesity Patrice Cani , a WELBIO researcher at the Louvain Drug Research Institute of the University of Louvain (UCL, Belgium), and his team in cooperation with Willem de Vos, professor at the University of Wageningen (WU), have just made two major advances in the fight against obesity and type 2 diabetes. They have succeeded in halting the development of these two diseases in mice using two distinct treatments based on a bacterium called Akkermansia. If the tests prove to be positive among humans, these world-first discoveries will pave the way to the manufacture of a future drug that will make it possible to fight not just diabetes and obesity, but also cardio-vascular diseases and intestinal inflammation. This discovery has just been published in the prestigious scientific . Over the past 10 years, Patrice Cani, his team and Willem de Vos have been working on a bacterium called Akkermansia muciniphila, which, and the researchers at UCL were the first to demonstrate this, plays a key role in the battle against obesity and type 2 diabetes. This hypothesis made by the researchers at UCL in 2007 and proven in 2013, has been confirmed by other international researchers and is now an accepted fact. What did the team of Patrice Cani prove? That the use of live Akkermansia bacterium reduces the effects associated with obesity and diabetes in mice.