Glucagon-like peptide-1 is a potent hypoglycemic hormone with beneficial properties for the treatment of diabetes. However, its half-life is short because the rapid metabolic degradation. This study aims to prolong the half-life of glucagon-like peptide-1 through conjugation with the fatty acid side chain which helps the conjugates to interact with the albumin. Firstly, we chose two optimized polypeptide chains which have tremendous hypoglycemic effect named Cys17-Gly8-GLP-1(7-36)-NH2 and Cys37-Gly8-GLP-1(7-37)-NH2, and various fatty acid chains were modified. All conjugates preserved relatively strong GLP-1R activation and I-6 behaved best in glucose-lowering ability. The prolonged antidiabetic effects of I-6 were further confirmed by hypoglycemic efficacy test in vivo. Meanwhile, once daily injection of I-6 to diabetic mice achieved long-term beneficial effects on glucose tolerance, body weight and blood chemistry. It is concluded that I-6 is a promising agent for further investigation of its potential to treat obese patients with diabetes.
Keywords: Body weight; Diabetes; Fatty acid; GLP-1.
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