Grant: Project Grant

Treating health conditions like diabetes and obesity have recently been transformed by medications like Ozempic and WeGovy, which help manage blood glucose and promote weight loss. These are very important and exciting new drugs that will most likely improve the lives of millions of people worldwide. However, clinical trials show that the active molecule in these treatments (semaglutide) not only reduces the amount of fat in our bodies but also results in significant skeletal muscle loss. This is important as the muscles in our body aren't just necessary for movement and daily activities; they also play a key role in shaping our overall health and long-term well-being. In fact, maintaining muscle mass helps support energy levels, preserve mobility, contribute to a healthy immune system, and enhance quality of life, especially as we grow older. Adding to the clinical trials showing reduced skeletal muscle mass, our preclinical data show that semaglutide also leads to the loss of heart muscle mass, resulting in smaller hearts. While we do not yet know if this loss of heart mass is also observed in humans, this is still an important observation as this has the potential to be another side-effect that needs to be studied and hopefully prevented. Based on these important observations, we propose to study how semaglutide contributes to loss of heart and skeletal muscle mass as well as test a new treatment that can be used with semaglutide to maintain heart and skeletal muscle mass without negating the beneficial effects of semaglutide on weight loss or lowering blood glucose levels. Given that over 1 million Canadians are now taking semaglutide, this project will investigate how heart and skeletal muscle are lost and test a feasible treatment strategy designed to preserve skeletal muscle and heart mass in patients who are otherwise benefiting from this medication.