Dr. Saira Hameed

And yeah, about sort of 15 to 20 are probably clinically relevant, but there's a whole lot more out there.

And what's so exciting in the field is that more and more are being discovered.

Exactly.

So we could never believe in the here and now that we are at the peak of our knowledge in this area.

There will be more hormones discovered.

And as they're discovered, we will understand more and more about how we as human beings work.

So it's an exciting time.

we need to understand what is the structure, what is the molecular structure of that hormone.

Once that has been elucidated, you can chemically synthesize a medicinal mimic.

And that medicinal mimic can be identical to the naturally occurring hormone.

Or you can make tweaks to the molecular structure so that the medicinal version does something extra.

So if we look at the example of GLP-1, very famous hormone now because of drugs like Manjaro, Wegovi, etc.

The naturally released hormone released by the gut after eating lasts in the system minutes.

Whereas if you inject these medicinal versions, they will last in the system for a week because of those changes to the molecular structure.

So that's what we're doing when we replace a hormone.

And as I say, it can be like for like, or we can have changed it in some way to benefit the patient.

Exactly right.

So in the history of endocrinology, the first hormone replacement, exactly as you say, came from animal glands.

So the first insulin came from dog pancreases.

And then once there was proof of concept, for decades, insulin was extracted from pig and cow pancreases.