A New L-BAIBA Upgrade Just Dropped: Oct-B Crushes Obesity in Mice at 1/80th the Dose
Oct-B, a novel octyl ester prodrug of L-BAIBA, prevented high-fat diet-induced obesity in mice with ~80-fold greater potency than plain L-BAIBA.
Chinese researchers may have solved the biggest practical problem with L-BAIBA. It works, but you need boatloads of it. Their new ester version, Oct-B, looks dramatically better.
“Oct-B exhibits 80-fold greater efficacy than L-BAIBA in alleviating obesity in high-fat diet-fed mice.”
I’ve been digging into L-BAIBA lately as a non-stimulant, exercise-mimicking fat-loss compound (the one your muscles release when you actually train). The human-equivalent doses in most supplement bottles are laughably low compared with what moved the needle in rodents. This paper made me sit up straight. They appear to have fixed that exact issue.
What Exactly Is Oct-B?
Oct-B is the octyl ester of (S)-β-aminoisobutyric acid. That’s basically L-BAIBA with an eight-carbon chain attached. Once inside the body, esterases quickly clip the chain and liberate free L-BAIBA, but the lipophilic tail lets the molecule cross membranes far more easily. The result is much higher tissue levels at tiny doses.
The team synthesized four esters (hexyl, heptyl, octyl, decyl) and ran acute-toxicity screening first. Only the octyl version, Oct-B, survived high-dose testing without killing mice. The shorter and longer chains dropped animals within hours even at moderate doses. Oct-B hit the sweet spot for absorption and safety.
The Weight-Loss Results Are Wild
Standard setup: male C57BL/6J mice, 60% fat diet for 8 weeks to induce obesity.
Groups:
Chow-fed lean controls (CK)
High-fat diet + vehicle (HFD)
High-fat diet + L-BAIBA 24 mg/kg/day IP
High-fat diet + Oct-B at 0.6, 1.2, or 2.4 mg/kg/day IP (that’s 10–40× lower than the L-BAIBA dose)
Food intake was identical across all high-fat groups, so no appetite effect.
By week 8 the high-dose Oct-B group (2.4 mg/kg) had gained almost no weight and finished statistically indistinguishable from the lean chow-fed mice. L-BAIBA at 24 mg/kg helped a little, but Oct-B blew it away.
Metabolic and Histology Improvements
Serum lipids (TG, TC, LDL-C) and liver enzymes (ALT, AST) all dropped significantly more with Oct-B than L-BAIBA. Liver TG and TC content fell hard. Oil Red O staining showed almost no steatosis in the high-dose Oct-B livers.
White adipose tissue had smaller adipocytes, far fewer mast cells, and strong UCP1 browning. Gene expression confirmed the story: big drops in lipogenic genes (PPARγ, ACC1, FAS), big rises in fat-breakdown genes (PPARα, HSL), and UCP1 skyrocketed.
The knockout punch came from quantitative mass spectrometry. After a single Oct-B injection, free L-BAIBA levels in white fat, brown fat, muscle, and plasma were orders of magnitude higher than after a huge direct L-BAIBA injection. That explains the 80-fold potency jump.
Why This Actually Matters for Humans
Typical L-BAIBA supplements give 300–1000 mg/day. The mouse doses that actually worked (100–150 mg/kg) scale to 8–12 grams per day in humans, which is absurd.
Oct-B worked beautifully at a human-equivalent dose of roughly 15–30 mg/day. That is normal-supplement territory.
Safety in mice looked clean: no deaths or organ damage at doses way above the effective range, and 14-day repeated histology was normal.
What’s Next on the Horizon
The paper only used intraperitoneal injection, so oral bioavailability is the big unknown. If Oct-B absorbs decently by mouth (most simple esters do), this could become the first real “exercise in a pill” that actually raises tissue BAIBA to physiological levels without insane dosing.
Longer-term studies and proper toxicology packages will be needed, but the ester approach itself is boringly safe (your body cleaves dietary esters constantly).
Safety, Ethics, and Caveats
Classic mouse caveats apply: 8 weeks isn’t a lifetime, IP isn’t oral, and C57BL/6J mice love getting fat on 60% lard. The acute toxicity differences between the four chain lengths were surprisingly dramatic, so formulation matters a lot.
That said, Oct-B was the clear winner on both efficacy and safety margins in this direct head-to-head. No obvious red flags in the data they showed.
One Last Thing
If you’ve been waiting for a credible, non-stimulant, browning-based fat-loss compound that doesn’t require heroic dosing, put Oct-B on your watch list. For once the numbers actually make sense for real-world use.
Explore the Full Study
Wang J, Wei S, Guo J, et al. Oct-B: A derivative of L-BAIBA significantly alleviating high-fat diet-induced obesity in mice. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 2024;734:150739.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2024.150739 (open access)