• Question: Could science "develop" a new hormone?

    Asked by ExtraCheekyNandos to Amy, Craig, Laura, Partha, Saffron on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Craig Doig

      Craig Doig answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      yes there are lots of hormones that have been developed by people. Another word for this is ‘synthetic’ they are used often by doctors to treat diseases and new ones are being made all of the time.
      Imagine if you could make a medicine which would produce all of the benefits of exercise just by taking it. Thats what we are working towards.

    • Photo: Saffron Whitehead

      Saffron Whitehead answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      This is a difficult question. Do you mean could we develop a new hormone that doesn’t already exist in our bodies? The answer is it would be almost impossible because whilst one may invent a function for it we would have to design a gene that would encode the hormone and a gene that would encode a receptor for the hormone as well as deciding what would stimulate the release of the hormone and then you can imagine genetically engineering this whole process and somehow getting it into the germ line! Science fiction at its best!

      However that said we are always making new synthetic hormones which act like hormones that already exist or block the action of hormones. These are used to treat endocrine disorders.

    • Photo: Laura Wales

      Laura Wales answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      I think Craig and Saffron have answered this perfectly. I’ve nothing to add.

    • Photo: Amy Cameron

      Amy Cameron answered on 20 Jun 2015:

      Nothing more to add.

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