A new, ultra-rapid formulation of insulin reached peak activity in pigs with diabetes about twice as fast as a commercially available option, according to new research.
The formulation, which peaked in as little as 9 minutes, could improve quality-of-life for patients with diabetes by allowing them to more quickly manage their blood sugar levels during mealtimes.
Type 1 diabetes is one of the most common chronic conditions, affecting about 40 million people around the world. Patients with diabetes usually receive routine injections of insulin to control their blood sugar levels, but current insulin formulations suffer from various drawbacks. For example, even fast-acting insulin treatments can take as long as 90 minutes to peak in activity, making them less than ideal for patients who need quick and effective blood sugar control during mealtimes.
Here, Joseph Mann and colleagues designed a faster-acting insulin formulation based on polymer excipients, compounds that maintain the insulin in a less aggregated form that more closely mimics how the hormone is naturally released in the body. The scientists used a high-throughput screen to evaluate various excipients, and integrated the top-performing candidate into an insulin formulation named UFAL.
When injected into pigs with diabetes, the new formulation reached peak activity in 9 minutes — twice as fast as the commercially available insulin formulation Humalog, which peaked in 25 minutes. Furthermore, UFAL was safe in rats and outperformed Humalog and similar rapid-acting insulin analogs in a model that simulates drug activity in humans.
The authors caution that more work is needed to pin down their formulation’s activity and safety in people, as pigs show different insulin dynamics compared with humans.
Read Researchers Develop a New Ultrafast Insulin for Management of Blood Sugar in Diabetes for more on this research from Stanford University.
Reference: “An ultrafast insulin formulation enabled by high-throughput screening of engineered polymeric excipients” by Joseph L. Mann, Caitlin L. Maikawa, Anton A. A. Smith, Abigail K. Grosskopf, Sam W. Baker, Gillie A. Roth, Catherine M. Meis, Emily C. Gale, Celine S. Liong, Santiago Correa, Doreen Chan, Lyndsay M. Stapleton, Anthony C. Yu, Ben Muir, Shaun Howard, Almar Postma and Eric A. Appel, 1 July 2020, Science Translational Medicine.
DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aba6676
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10 Comments
Details
It’s can be normalize sugar level when taking that insulin?
How can I get treated with type 2 daibetes
When will it available to the public
This article confuses peak insulin activity with initial insulin activity. Humalog doesn’t peak in 25 minutes. It begins to work in 25 minutes, and peaks in 90 to 120 minutes. So this new insulin doesn’t peak in 9 minutes. It begins to work in 9 minutes. Which is still a great thing. But it’s different than “peaking.”
We need to be very careful providing even faster working insulin to the public. Diabetics have enough issues trying to maintain blood sugars between acceptable levels and regularly suffer spikes an troughs if their blood sugar control is not where it should be.
By providing insulin that works even faster than something like Humalog, we are inviting diabetics to eat a much less diabetic friendly type of food because they believe that can offset the sugars quicker with this new insulin. The issue here is that like a leveraged investment that can provide higher gains (and losses) there is a much higher chance of getting the calculations of insulin to sugar correct and therefore we will see much larger numbers of hypoglycaemia that take a lot longer to treat because of the supercharged insulin that is working in their bodies.
As a type 1 diabetic myself, I would be very hesitant to use an insulin that is stronger and faster acting.
Details will be appriciated
It’s called Afrezza..inhaled insulin..
https://afrezza.com
Errors in Article …
Peak Action is not 25 minutes in Humalog, its 65-75mins. This should have been checked & fixed by the writer/editor/fact-checker before publication.
Perhaps, this new formuation may start working in 9 minutes, & peaks in appx 30 mins…. due to these errors, probably a good idea to find & read the actual study online- for the real/true numbers.
These facts are easy to verify!!!
Google: the “medication” insert package – for Humalog, & this should show you the actual pharmacodynamics ,,,