BioByte 142: Addiction Treatment with GLP-1s, Engineering Cement-Making Microbes, and Leveraging GigaTIME to Study Tumor Immune Microenvironments
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Glucagon-like peptide-1
10 min read
The article extensively discusses GLP-1 receptor agonists for addiction treatment, but readers may not understand the underlying hormone biology, how GLP-1 functions in the brain's reward system, and why manipulating this pathway affects both appetite and addictive behaviors
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Tumor microenvironment
11 min read
The GigaTIME paper section assumes familiarity with tumor immune microenvironments. Understanding the complex ecosystem of immune cells, fibroblasts, and signaling molecules that surround tumors provides essential context for why AI-generated imaging of these environments matters for cancer treatment
Welcome to Decoding Bio’s BioByte: each week our writing collective highlight notable news—from the latest scientific papers to the latest funding rounds—and everything in between. All in one place.
Dewey Albinson, Cement Works (1933)
What we read
Blogs
Will blockbuster obesity drugs revolutionize addiction treatment? [Elie Dolgin, Nature News Feature, December 2025]
Stories about people struggling with substance use disorders, such as opioid, cigarettes, cocaine and alcohol addiction, who have managed to become drug-free for the first time after starting GLP-1 treatments have been spreading rapidly in recent years.
Earlier this year, Christian Hendershot, a psychologist at USC, reported that weekly injections of semaglutide reduced alcohol consumption:
Semaglutide treatment did not affect average drinks per calendar day or number of drinking days, but significantly reduced drinks per drinking day (β, −0.41; 95% CI, −0.73 to −0.09; P = .04) and weekly alcohol craving (β, −0.39; 95% CI, −0.73 to −0.06; P = .01), also predicting greater reductions in heavy drinking over time relative to placebo (β, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.71 to 0.99; P = .04).
In 2015, a team of researchers uncovered the first evidence of the connection between GLP-1 and alcohol dependence, where there was a common variant of the GLP-1R gene was linked to heavier drinking. The same team used post-mortem brain tissue and discovered that GLP-1R expression was elevated in reward-related regions of the brain.The mechanistic hypothesis is that alcohol dampens the body’s GLP-1 production, so the brain boosts expression of the hormone’s receptors “to preserve sensitivity to the hormone that govern reward and emotion”.
However, since then, the first slew of trials with first-generation GLP-1 therapies like exenatide and dulaglutide did not have an impact on alcohol or smoking dependence. One study, however, involving people with opioid-use disorder saw a 40% reduction in cravings with liraglutide.
Second-generation GLP-1s are much more potent, so these could lead to better results. There are several trials in progress, testing high dose semaglutide for alcohol-use disorder; reading out next year. Eli Lilly, for instance, has launched a 300 person trial to test tirzepatide for the treatment for alcohol-use disorder.
You Gotta Make It ‘Til You Make It [Lee, Off the Media, December 2025 (based on original paper by Ortiz et al., bioRxiv, December 2025)]
Cement production is responsible for roughly 8% of global emissions. Creating lower-carbon alternatives that match its strength and durability is
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