An insulin pill, long desired by diabetes patients but abandoned as not physically viable, could be available by the end of this decade as an Israeli pharmaceutical company named Oramed Pharmaceuticals races along a Danish pharmaceutical giant, Novo Nordisk to be first with what could be a multibillion-dollar product.
Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk is the world's largest seller of insulin products with a market value of about USD 74 billion, and Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc, a small Israeli pharmaceutical company with a market value of only USD 50 million and headquartered in Jerusalem.
Concept of Oral Insulin was dead till now because
The concept of oral insulin as a way to relieve people with type 1 diabetes of several daily injections has been around since the 1930s. It was not materialized because insulin is destroyed by enzymes in the digestive system before it can do reduce the suger level in the blood.
What Novo Nordisk is coming up with?
Novo Nordisk believe they have come up with solutions that will allow enough insulin to survive the onslaught of digestive juices. According to Peter Kurtzhals, Novo's head of diabetes research, "We've built technologies and we've seen from studies in animals and early human trials that this may not be as impossible as decades of research had indicated previously". If all goes well, Novo believes its oral insulin could be available by the end of this decade or early next decade.
What Oramed Pharmaceuticals is coming up with?
The program of Oramed Pharmaceuticals is ahead of Novo Nordisk's and the solution is similar to that of Novo Nordisk's. It has begun enrolling patients in Phase II, or midstage for clinical trials. The master brains behind Oramed's oral insulin is the chief executive's mother, Miriam Kidron, who laid the groundwork with years of diabetes research at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center.
Insulin injections -How it works?
Insulin is naturally produced in the pancreas and then goes to the liver. But injected insulin circulates throughout the body before it gets into liver. Insulin injections were introduced commercially as a life-saving treatment for diabetes by Eli Lilly and Company in 1923
Insulin Pills-How it works?
Since the digestive system can break down insulin in a matter of seconds, both Novo and Oramed's approaches for their insulin pills involve protective coatings and molecular tweaks or added ingredients to help enough insulin be absorbed to provide effective glycemic control. That involves giving large enough doses of insulin so that some 90 percent can be absorbed without sacrificing efficacy. The main attractiveness of an insulin pill, if it works, is that any absorbed insulin would go directly to the liver from the digestive tract.
According to Dr. Jason Gaglia, a top researcher at Harvard Medical School's Joslin Diabetes Center, an oral insulin could be used to better control overnight blood sugar. "If you could give it in an oral pill that is just hitting the liver, it would be wonderful," he said. "If people take this pill at dinner time, they're not going to have this excess glucose production overnight and it will be really good for getting those morning blood sugars down."
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