Dr. Kevin Tracey

They've also done it, Sangeeta and Thomas Huerta and others in my lab have also done these experiments in obese animals and shown that by activating the vagus nerve with focused ultrasound, you can normalize insulin resistance and blood glucose.

you can decrease food intake and you can accelerate body weight loss in obese cafeteria fed mice and rats.

And so the question is, can we learn from these kinds of approaches

to target the vagus nerve in metabolic conditions that may or may not be similar to or the same as targeting the vagus nerve for immunological conditions.

There's tremendous, I mean, you said it in the very beginning.

What's so exciting about this, Eric, is that I'm not pushing snake oil here or selling anything.

hypotheses that can be subjected to experiments and to clinical trials.

And the challenge we have now is, and sometimes this is the hardest challenge in science, isn't doing the experiments anymore.

And we've got all the technology, certainly.

The hardest challenge is asking the right question.

What would be the clinical trials we could do now that would have the biggest impact on

And what would be the mechanistic experiments we could do in the lab now that would get us faster into more clinical trials?

That's what has me excited.

That's what keeps me up at night.

I have to say there were plenty of times when I could have quit in that 30 years, as you say.

But the reason I don't quit is the same reason you haven't.

I mean, we meet our patients.

They need something.

And every patient I've ever asked about this option has said, if it works, I want it.

And we have data now.