A bloodless way to test blood sugar has long been the stuff of science fiction. But, now, a group of researchers in Wales is moving an innovative idea of drawing blood without puncturing the skin from the conceptual world of Star Trek to perhaps being available at a pharmacy down the street.
Category: Science
JDRF, partnered with Sanofi, the company that manufactures Lantus among other insulins, recently pledged up to $4.6 million to support research into four different efforts to design a glucose-responsive insulin.
Glucose-responsive insulin is one of the technologies on the horizon that Kowalski says he’s most excited about. The other is encapsulation, where insulin-producing cells would be protected from the body’s auto-immune attack.
Nearly 18 months into a breakthrough stem cell trial for type 1 diabetes, significant positive results are emerging. ViaCyte, a leader in stem cell therapies for diabetes, is conducting this first human trial of its kind.
“This approach has the potential to provide diabetics with a new pancreas that is protected from the immune system, which would allow them to control their blood sugar without taking drugs. That’s the dream,” says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT, who oversaw Vegas’s work.
Type Zero Technologies' chief mathematician, Dr. Boris Kovatchev, reached out to Riding on Insulin to gauge interest in being part of a groundbreaking artificial pancreas trial.
Dr. James Shapiro, the man who perfected the islet cell transplant to cure type 1 diabetes, is evolving his groundbreaking research by working on a method of implanting insulin-producing cells under a person’s skin to try and stamp out the condition once and for all.
Bigfoot’s goal is to make pump-sensor therapy simpler than the pump companies before them have. They envision themselves as a service provider rather than a hardware or device company. Their service will be to “do a better job delivering insulin,” automating your between-meal insulin therapy, the communication between your pump and your Dexcom CGM, even so far as serving as a single point of contact for all of your supply and prescription inventory management, sending you supplies when you need them, “connecting everything, making it intuitive,” says Brewer.
"We have developed a special protocol to purify groups of specific types of stem cells taken from the patient’s own blood, and transplant them into the pancreas to allow for their differentiation into beta cells that produce insulin..."
While we will not see a true artificial pancreas - a closed-loop insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring system - come to market in 2016, we are so close we can artificially taste it.