Diabetes is believed to be affecting 9% of the world’s population based on an estimate by the World Health Organization. Novel therapeutics are needed to help control this growing global diabetes epidemic. Animal models that closely resemble human diabetes conditions and progressions are critical to successful research & development. HZ-Bio has a collection of animals with naturally occurring diabetes characterized by chronic fasting serum glucose of >7mM and/or HbA1c of >5%. HZ-Bio diabetes cohort has been tested against an approved therapeutics Victoza (liraglutide) in a cross over study in which 8 male monkeys were subcutaneously injected daily with liraglutide at 30 ug/kg for 21 days. 

As an analog of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), liraglutide strongly suppressed food intake (Fig. 1), contributing to a measurable weight lost (Fig. 2) compared to vehicle control.

Importantly, liraglutide significantly reduced serum glucose (Fig. 3) and HbA1c (Fig. 4) levels.

Moreover, liraglutide significantly reduced serum triglycerides (Fig. 5) and total cholesterol (Fig. 6) levels, reflective of clinical data (Cardiovasc Diabetol. 2014 Feb 22;13:49; J Endocrinol Invest. 2015 Jan;38(1):81-9). Collectively, these data highlight the characteristics of HZ-Bio diabetes cohort; in particular, its highly translatable nature.