The findings advocate that Fyn kinase may offer a target for a new kind of weight-loss drug, said the researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Neuroscience. The study appears in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism.

“When there is an imbalance between what we eat and what we burn,” the result is obesity, team leader Claire Bastie stated in a news release from the journal. “And the problem of obesity is not going away. This is a new mechanism to help the body burn extra energy.”

The experimental drug used to block Fyn kinase in the mice is not an best candidate for clinical trials in humans because both Fyn kinase and AMPK have effects in the brain as well as in fat and muscle.

“Our next goal is to design [a drug] extremely specific to muscle and [fat],” Bastie stated.