The Business of Diabetes: 2023 Update on Glucose-Responsive Insulin

My readers may recall back in 2007, I interviewed the CEO of a startup then known as SmartCells, Inc. named Todd Zion (seehttps://blog.sstrumello.com/2007/06/conversation-with-smartcells-ceo-todd.html for my original post). In 2010, the big pharma giant Merck& Company, Inc. acquired SmartCells, Inc. (see my post athttps://blog.sstrumello.com/2010/12/merck-acquires-smartcells-inc.html for my coverage of that). For its part, Merck remained rather tight-lipped about revealing much of anything about that, although it did become the first-ever glucose responsive insulin to complete a clinical trial, which was known Merck ' s MK-2640 to complete its Phase 1 trial in August 2016. However, that product candidate was rather unceremoniously discontinued in Q2 2017 due to negative Phase 1 results. Seehttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30125349/ for the disappointing trial results. In other words, the original SmartCells was officially dead.Have Insulin Analogues Reached the End-of-the-Road Scientifically?That said, investments in glucose-responsive insulin seem to be an acknowledgement of sorts that big insulin-makers have really seem to have reached the end of what is possible (scientifically-speaking) with insulin analogues in terms of making them work faster or longer. For example, Novo Nordisk ' s " me-better " version of aspart branded as Fiasp (the name means "FasterInsulinAspart) works by the addition of some vitamins in the insulin which marginally-improves the absorption into ...
Source: Scott's Web Log - Category: Endocrinology Tags: Eli Lilly and Company Smart Insulin 2023 Merck Novo Nordisk SmartCells Source Type: blogs