Welcome
Welcome to Zafgen Inc.,
At Zafgen, we are dedicated to developing novel therapeutics to treat obesity, one of the world’s most critical and widespread health issues, affecting an estimated 400 million people globally.
Rates of obesity in developing countries have tripled in the last 20 years, with American obesity rates standing as the highest in the world. It is because of this growing epidemic that we are taking obesity as seriously as cancer. Like cancer, obesity is directly related to hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Like cancer, obesity can stigmatize its sufferers. And, like cancer, we believe obesity can be attacked aggressively and successfully, with therapeutics that directly treat the tissue that causes it.
Here at Zafgen, we’re looking at – and targeting – obesity in a totally different way. A growing body of research demonstrates that the nature of adipose tissue, or fat cells, is a significant determinant of obesity. We view adipose tissue as an active participant in the disease. This represents a fundamentally new paradigm in how we think about and potentially treat obesity. It shifts the focus away from an individual’s “lack of motivation” or “failure of will” and toward the recognition of obesity as a biologically based disease that can be treated with new, specialized drugs.
Science
Zafgen is the first biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing novel obesity therapeutics based on vascular targeting in adipose tissue (fat). Our groundbreaking approach directly targets adipose vasculature to shrink fat cells and help the body sustain a lean, healthy state.
The Zafgen Team
Because adipose tissue contains many blood vessels and comprises cells that work to store calories, we believe it can be successfully manipulated by agents that shrink its blood supply, driving loss of fat mass and weight in much the same way some new cancer treatments work to shrink tumors.
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