SMART INSULIN

[timo2]

Is this going to be a halfway house to a cure, I wonder?

:arrow: Smart Insulin (technology review.com 30th Oct 2008)

:arrow: SmartCells, Inc. and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Announce Partnership and $1 Million Funding to Advance SmartInsulin™ for Type 1 Diabetes

 

[diabetesmum]

This looks very interesting - thanks for the link, Timo.
Sue

 

[hanadr]

Really interesting, but how far have they got with it? Would it help my T1 husband keep on tracak and not keep waking me at 4:30?

 

[lionrampant]

k, I know this is a serious topic - but when I read the title I had visions of trendy little two-seater cars running over sugar cubes...

But on topic: Very exciting. If we weren't still looking at a two year clinical trial. Screw ethics, gimme gimme gimme...

 

[LittleSue]

This is what we want - kinda Byetta for type 1s

 

[Dennis]

It looks a really interesting concept, but I think Lion is being a bit optimistic. It is in the very early stages of phase 1 trials and the timephase to get through the 3 phases needed before licencing is generally at least 5 years. In the UK you can probably add a year to that because we tend to not licence drugs over here until the States have guinea-pigged them for us!! The 2 newest type-2 meds (Byetta and Januvia) were available in the US for nearly 2 years before NICE approved them for the UK.

 

[lionrampant]

That's it. I'll save up, fly out, and just pay them to give it to me...

 

[jopar]

Interesting concept indeed, and yes sadly another too quick in the hope stacks as it is soooo early in the testing phases indeed....

But with saying that if it was a sucess I very much doubt if I would choose to be one of hte first users! I'm so used to having insulin and using the pump... It sorts of scares me thinking about something trundleing around my body doing it for me...

 

[lionrampant]

I also just realised this neatly gets around the problem of beta cell destruction. I mean - right now you could, in theory, regrow pancreatic beta cells. But what's to stop the immune system from attacking them just like it did when you were diagnosed? This gets around that by not having any beta cells to attack.