Research In The News (May)

This post is a collection of interesting items that have not yet made it into clinical trials, or which were unsuccessful in previous clinical trials, but are still being worked on.  These are not aimed at a cure.

Comparing Three Continuous Glucose Monitors

This is the summary of a study aimed at comparing CGMs:

The Navigator and G4 Platinum had the best overall accuracy, with an aggregate mean absolute relative difference (MARD) of all paired points of 12.3 ± 12.1% and 10.8 ± 9.9%, respectively. Both had lower MARDs of all paired points than Enlite (17.9 ± 15.8%). Very large errors (MARD > 50%) were less common with the G4 (0.5%) than with the Enlite (4.3%) while the number of very large errors with the Navigator (1.4%) was intermediate between the G4 and Enlite.

Full Study: http://dst.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/21/1932296814532203.full.pdf+html%20


New Treatment Option for Type-1s?

LX4211 is an experimental drug designed to cause people to pee out more sugar than normal.  It is designed to cause people to need less insulin at meals, because they can get rid of more sugar by urinating it out.

Quote from the news:

Lexicon said the drug, codenamed LX4211, reduced the total dose of insulin taken by patients at meal times by 32 percent, compared with a 6 percent reduction in patients given a placebo.

News: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/14/us-lexicon-pharm-diabetesdrug-idUSBREA3D0KB20140414

Discussion
When I first heard of this I thought it was a "cheap trick" and not particularly important.  But using 32% less insulin at mealtimes (which is probably about 16% less in total), is a pretty big effect, so it is at least interesting.  I would be even more interested if it improved A1c or BG numbers, since those are directly correlated with better health.  Also, the people in the study had "poorly controlled" type-1 diabetes, but the exact level of control was not stated in the clinical trial record. So it is important to see what happens with people whose control is normal or average.

This drug has been (or is being) tested in a total of 12 clinical trials; one of which is on type-1 diabetics specifically.  The type-1 test was on 36 people.  The study says that people in it must be "willing to refrain from using carbohydrate counting to adjust insulin during the study".  I'm not sure what is going on with that, but if they require people to change their insulin dosing regime as part of the study (and especially to not count carbs), that is certainly something where details matter.

There is a diagram describing how this drug works on the company's web page (but the rest of the page is mostly about type-2):
http://www.lexgen.com/pipeline/lx4211.html


Enzyme Based Artificial Pancreas

This is another way of making an artificial pancreas that uses chemistry rather than electronics. Unfortunately, it looks to me like they are many years away from even starting human tests, and once those start, they are still many more years away from availability.  Still, it is a good idea, and the more different paths to a cure that are being worked on, the better.

News: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-mechanobiology-enzyme-micropump-autonomously-insulin.html

Bi or Tri Hormonal Artificial Pancreas
The link below is to a company trying to develop a tubeless bi or even tri hormonal artificial pancreas.  Sounds interesting, but I can't tell when the website was last updated.  One of the items is a job listing, and it contains the following two quotes:

The CoreMD and "wedges" electronic hardware designs have already been completed. You will work closely with hardware and software engineering senior management in fine-tuning and prototyping (SLA) its pumping mechanism design, making re-design suggestions to save power/space, and capturing that design in SoliWorks. You will then test the SLA and re-design it if needed.  [Which sounds pretty good.]

We are looking for volunteers willing to work "pro bono" (free of charge) [Which does not sound good at all.]

http://pancreum.com/index.html

Serova

Below is an update on Serova's Cell Pouch.  It looks like they had good results on the very early testing, and expect to spend the rest of 2014 getting more, similar data.  They are still testing with immunosuppressive drugs, and obviously, this gets a lot more interesting when they stop using those.

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140422-903834.html

New Delivery Mechanism

The link below reports on another "cured in mice" experiment. This was done by combining GAD-65 IL-10, and an anti-CD3.  (I'm not holding my breath on that getting into human trials; not with the problems GAD65 and anti-CD3s have already had.)  However, I was interested in the dosing method.  They modified (possibly via genetic engineering) a safe bacteria, which is commonly found in the gut, to generate two of the drugs they gave.  This sounds like a very interesting and broadly useful technique, if they can control the dosing sufficiently.

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2014/03/25/db13-1236.abstract?papetoc

INGAP Continues

INGAP is a beta cell growth hormone.  It was tested on type-1 diabetics and did not have positive results.  The news article below, which reports on a high school science project, reminds me of two things:

First, some researchers never give up.  Some of them are so committed to their discoveries, that they will continue to work on them even after there have been significant failures in clinical trials. This probably is a good thing; we want researchers who are "all in" and willing to push things as far as they can possibly go, even in the face of failure.  Those are the kind of researchers who will get the eventual cure into our hands.  However, it is important to remember just how committed they can be, when evaluating what they say.

Second, it is always shocking to me just how far technology has gone, in terms of letting younger people do more serious research.  Lab equipment has gotten easy enough to use, and cheap enough to use, so that high school students can do more serious research than they ever could before, and that has to be a good thing.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Montreal+teen+awarded+diabetes+research/9757443/story.html

Joshua Levy
http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com 
publicjoshualevy at gmail dot com
All the views expressed here are those of Joshua Levy, and nothing here is official JDRF, JDCA, or Tidepool news, views, policies or opinions. My daughter has type-1 diabetes and participates in clinical trials, which might be discussed here. My blog contains a more complete non-conflict of interest statement. Thanks to everyone who helps with the blog.