With more than 1 billion people worldwide living with obesity and predictions that 50% of American adults will have obesity by 2030, a physician-owned company is aiming to soon provide doctors with an easy-to-use tool to help diagnose and treat this global public health epidemic.
Phenomix Sciences was founded by National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded obesity experts and Mayo Clinic physician-scientists Andres Acosta, MD, PhD, and Michael Camilleri, MD, in Rochester, Minnesota, in 2017. Health2047, the wholly-owned innovation subsidiary of the AMA created to overcome systemic dysfunction in the U.S. health care, recently launched the company.
Through a decade of research, Drs. Acosta and Camilleri identified four obesity phenotypes and treatments that work best to help patients fight obesity based on which phenotype or phenotypes they have. Work is well underway to make the company’s MyPhenome™ test commercially available by the end of 2021. The test allows a physician to order a blood test that identifies the phenotype or phenotypes the patient has, giving the physician and patient a roadmap for how best to help the patient lose weight and keep it off.