Neuroscientist Gets Microscopic About Fat for Amgen
He expects to hear the question more and more.
But Frank D. Collins doesn’t mind. The humor inherent in how much he weighs is not lost on him.
After all, the 51-year-old neuroscientist has been studying human fat and its causes in excess of 14 hours a day for more than a year. Now, Amgen Inc., the Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology company, has entrusted him with finding a cure to obesity.
It is here, in a scattering of nondescript buildings in the west end of Thousand Oaks, that Collins puts his expertise to use studying fat down to its tiniest, microscopic levels.
He talks easily and rapidly about the relationship between the nervous system and obesity. He draws a simple chart: Weight is controlled by appetite and metabolism.
“This is the formula,” he said, as if it were that simple.
But then the real discussion begins.
He cites results of experiments where two obese rats are sewn together so they share the same blood to prove that some types of obesity can be attributed to genetics. He opens up trade journals that portray strings of amino acids stretching for pages.
Collins is a fat expert.
So the question of how much he weighs is bound to come up. For the record: He weighs 154 pounds and is in excellent shape.
“I could probably stand to gain a few more,” the 5-foot 7-inch Collins said dryly. He even offers to pose for a photograph with a hamburger.
This is the man Amgen hopes will make a fortune for the company by finding a drug that will help combat obesity. He is a man who wears dress socks with running shoes and jeans to work and has a penchant for art with a fish motif, prints of which hang on his office walls and pop up on his computer screen when it is not in use, which is rarely.
He is also a brilliant--if somewhat obsessed--scientist who heads up a research team getting the first crack at the “fat gene” discovered last year. That discovery and Collins’ research could one day lead to finding the key to fighting obesity and opening a lucrative market for new drugs.
“There are a lot of people who want to lose a lot of weight,” Collins said.
Amgen officials recently signed an agreement and paid $20 million to New York’s Rockefeller University for exclusive access to the so-called fat gene. The agreement could be worth hundreds of millions more if marketable drugs are developed.
Rockefeller University scientists announced in December that they had identified and cloned a gene in rats that they believe is partly responsible for obesity, sending a field of researchers scurrying to develop drugs to fight the problem in people.
Researchers believe the gene sends a signal to the brain that gives a person the sensation of hunger. It is believed that the signal in severely obese people does not turn off, regardless of how much they eat.
“It is not like they are self-indulgent slobs,” Collins said. “It’s what their brains are doing for some reason, which we don’t know.” He said researchers are looking to “trick the thermostat to convince the body that it got the food it needed.”
Because Collins had been studying obesity as it relates to diabetes the previous 18 months, it was only natural that he be given the lead on the fat gene research, company spokesman David Kaye said.
Before becoming Amgen’s senior director of neuroscience, Collins was a professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah and then was director of neuroscience at Synergen Inc., a pharmaceuticals company based in Boulder, Colo.
Collins heads a team of about 35 people that Amgen will dedicate to the fat gene project in the coming years. They believe that their work with obesity will spill over into helping people who are merely overweight.
But industry analysts predict that it will be at least five years and probably twice that long until Collins and his team come up with anything marketable. And even then, the analysts say, it may not be the “breakthrough drug” that grabs headlines, fills pharmacy shelves and sends Amgen’s stock through the roof as drugs such as Epogen and Neupogen have done for the company. Those drugs help produce blood cells for kidney dialysis and chemotherapy patients.
Before that can happen though, Collins and his colleagues have to develop the drug--a feat for which there are certainly no guarantees. Then they have to test it on rats, then monkeys and ultimately, people. It is a long process.
“I have people volunteering to take the first drug,” Collins said jokingly.
But it is this attitude that has some weight-control professionals approaching Collins’ research with mixed emotions.
“It would be great if they do discover a cure for obesity,” said Lois Zsarnay, a registered dietitian in Ventura. Zsarnay said her obese clients are the toughest to help, with a failure rate of more than 50%.
“You are battling against genetics,” she said.
But most of her overweight clients, she said, are fat because of poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle.
“There are lot of people that are not carrying that gene,” she said. “But they’ll latch on to that as their problem and ask for the drug. That’s my biggest concern.”
Dr. Felix L. Negron of Simi Valley agreed that most of his patients are overweight because of their habits and would probably line up to buy a new wonder drug promising weight loss.
“People want an easy solution to things,” he said. Negron, however, said the weight question is a combination of nature and nurture. And a drug that helps fight the genetic side of the equation will improve the overall health of America, Negron said.
“Fat is really a problem with Americans,” he said. “It leads to other health problems.” Negron estimated that more than 40% of Americans are overweight.
This is why Collins is excited about the team’s prospect for success.
“Obviously, there is a very large commercial market that would be interested in this,” he said.
He is also a busy man. While starting on his quest for an obesity cure, he is nearing a breakthrough on another drug that he and another research team he heads have been developing to fight Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease of the nervous system that slowly takes away a patient’s motor skills and is often fatal.
“Even the best medication now available doesn’t work after six to eight years,” said Kim Seidman, West Coast director of the American Parkinson’s Disease Assn. “We are praying for a breakthrough. (Collins’) work could be the long-term answer we are looking for.”
Seidman said more than 1 million Americans are afflicted with the disease.
“It’s a lot of work. I don’t get much sleep,” Collins said about his dual roles as head of two research teams. “I sleep in two shifts. I find I can be more effective.”
He awakes at 7 a.m. every day and leaves his Agoura Hills home for the office shortly afterward, where he remains until about 6:30 p.m.
That leaves four hours to spend with his wife and two young daughters, after which he sleeps until rising shortly after midnight, when he reads until about 3:30 a.m.
“I do a lot of concentrated thinking then,” he said. “The most important things happen at that time in the morning.”
