JULY 13, 2026
Python biology research points to potential treatments for heart disease, muscle loss, and obesity
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder are studying Burmese and ball pythons for biological traits — including extreme metabolic acceleration, reversible organ growth, and resistance to muscle atrophy — that may offer insights into human disease treatments. A study published this spring in the journal Nature Metabolism identified a molecule called pTOS that surges a thousandfold in python blood after feeding and appears to suppress appetite in obese mice. Scientists from CU Boulder and Stanford University have formed a company, Arkana Therapeutics, to develop these findings into drugs and therapies.
Pythons can fast for weeks or months, maintain muscle tone throughout, and dramatically expand their hearts and other organs after a meal — only to have those organs return to normal size weeks later. Researchers led by geneticist Leslie Leinwand at CU Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute have been studying these traits for two decades, arguing that the underlying biology could translate into medical treatments for humans.
The python's metabolism accelerates 10 to 40 times after a feeding, depending on meal size, according to Tommy Martin, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and former researcher in Leinwand's lab. Jack Gugel, a molecular biologist at CU Boulder, compared the effect to a Kentucky Derby racehorse going from rest to full sprint — and sustaining that pace for days. To accommodate this surge, the python's heart and other organs grow substantially, then contract back to baseline roughly a month later.
In humans, cardiac enlargement caused by high blood pressure or heart attack tends to become permanent and can prove fatal. Molecular biologist Yuxiao Tan, in a soon-to-be published study, found that python cardiac muscle cells also increase in number after feeding — a form of regeneration that does not occur in human hearts after injury, where scar tissue forms instead. Leinwand said this line of research may offer clues for remodeling human hearts at different life stages.