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Pharmaceutical who studies insulin for oral ingestion ensures that he will not give up the idea of replacing the "stigmatizing" injections. And he is moving forward with a new antidiabetic tablet. Science has taken important steps for the cure of type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes is increasing at breakneck speed, it's the pandemic of the 21st century. It reaches more than 420 million people around the world and in 25 years there will be more than 700 million people affected. This is a heavy burden for patients, a drain on countries' economic resources and a permanent challenge for scientists and the pharmaceutical industry. Over the last decades, important steps have been taken in research and, in the coming years, can be decisive for patients.
There is more and more hope in the cure of type 1 diabetes. Young people. For this autoimmune disease that destroys the pancreatic cells responsible for insulin production, stem cell research seems increasingly promising.
The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the world's leading producer of insulin, is at the forefront of research in this field. In recent decades, scientists have focused on the use of stem cells to replicate beta cells, which produce insulin. And they were successful, but the problem was discovering how to transplant them to the body without the immune system attacking them again.
As recently announced by Novo Nordisk, the company that "Noticias Magazine" was invited to visit in May, there are significant advances in the development of a kind of capsule to protect beta cells from the attacks of the immune system. Novo Nordisk plans to start the first clinical trial in a few years.
Since type 2 diabetes is a headache for researchers. It is at a later age, as a consequence of the lifestyles of the developed world where obesity and sedentary lifestyle are gaining ground. The vast majority of diabetics (90%) have this type of illness and there is no prospect of recovery, at least in the near future. However, there has been significant progress in technology and drugs to control the progression of the pathology and improve the quality of life of patients.
The replacement of insulin injections with pills is the most ambitious idea. The survey has suffered a setback in the past year, but has not been abandoned yet.
A Piece of the Missing Puzzle to the "Holy Grail"
Novo Nordisk has been pursuing this goal for years. He continued to do clinical trials of insulin in pills, but in November of last year he announced the suspension of the tests, because the results at the level of absorption of the insulin in pills, insulin by the body was not satisfactory in clinical terms. In the current situation, for an insulin tablet to have the same effect as an injection, it was necessary to increase the production of this hormone to unsustainable levels.
One piece of the puzzle is missing: discover the mechanism that will allow the molecule to be driven bloodstream. "We do not desist, we've made very significant progress, and when we started talking about oral insulin more than two decades ago, competition has come to make fun of us. laughs, "said Mads Thomsen, one of the company's vice presidents, at a conference for journalists around the world.For Thomsen, turning the daily injections into oral drugs will be the "Holy Grail" patients. "The finger prick hurts, but diabetics do not like to inject, no one likes it, it's stigmatizing," he said. explained
There are also other solutions, such as inhaled insulin, marketed in the US The acceptance was not as expected because the absorption It's not as effective as injections, says NM Terrance, clinical director of the Portuguese Diabetes Protection Association. (APDP)
Although oral insulin is not progressing, Novo Nordisk remains committed to converting other injectables into tablets. This is the case of GLP-1 (a peptide similar to Glucagon 1) administered to patients with type 2 diabetes. This anti-diabetic drug was introduced to the market in the 1990s, in an injectable formula. daily application (liraglutide). In a weekly administration formula (semaglutide), this is more comfortable for patients. In a few years it will be a tablet. The results of Phase III clinical trials for the oral version of semaglutide were positive and the company estimates that it can reach the market in 2023.
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