Gastrointestinal weight-loss surgery: glimpses at the molecular level

Pharmacotherapy for obesity remains a key challenge, and gastrointestinal weight-loss surgery remains a preferred option to help reduce excess body weight along with resolution of several comorbidities associated with obesity. This offers a unique opportunity to study the underlying mechanisms of gastro-intestinal weight-loss surgery to develop effective and less invasive long-term therapeutic interventions potentially mimicking the benefits of gastrointestinal weight-loss surgery. Here, we present an integrative analysis of currently available human transcriptomics data sets pre- and post-surgery and propose a computational biology strategy for selecting putative drug targets. We anticipate that approaches similar to the one that we outline here, would help elucidate underlying mechanisms that result in metabolic improvements and provide guidance on pharmaceutical targets to develop effective and less invasive therapies for obesity and related comorbidities.

► Molecular data analysis of gastro-intestinal weight-loss surgery. ► Integrated informatics strategy with pre- and post- weight-loss surgery datasets. ► Potential pathways modulated by weight-loss surgery. ► Informatics resources for data analysis and interpretation. ► Computational biology strategy for putative obesity drug discovery targets.