Intelligent insulin therapy: prevents blood sugar tips and life -threatening low points in diabetes
Intelligent insulin therapy: prevents blood sugar tips and life -threatening low points in diabetes
scientists have developed a new form of insulin, which can automatically switch on and off depending on the glucose levels in the blood. In animals, this ’smart’ insulin 1 effectively reduced and at the same time prevented the values too low sink.
for people with Diabetes The control of blood sugar levels is a decisive but challenging task. Insulin keeps blood sugar under control and helps to prevent the many long-term complications associated with high blood sugar levels, such as cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney diseases, stroke and blindness. A large part of the 422 million people with diabetes estimated worldwide needs insulin injections.
an excess of Insulin can mean that the blood sugar levels fall too strong-an illness described as hypoglycaemia that exposes people to a risk of serious complications, such as loss of consciousness, seizures and even death. Even mild or moderate hypoglycemia can cause fear, weakness and confusion. People with diabetes-especially those with Type 1 diabetes that always have to inject insulin-can experience waste of blood sugar mirror several times a week, says Michael Weiss, biochemist and doctor at Indiana University in Indianapolis. "It really affects the quality of life."
For decades, researchers have been working on developing a system that automatically adjusts insulin activity depending on the amount of glucose in the blood of a person. A common approach was to develop a connection that insulin releases when the glucose concentrations rise. However, a major disadvantage of this method is its irreversibility - as soon as insulin is released, it can no longer be held back.
a sugar -sensitive switch
The latest study published today by means of this problem by modifying insulin itself with sugar -sensitive components. Rita Slaaby, main scientist at the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk in Bagsværd, Denmark, and her colleagues have developed an insulin molecule with a switch that switches on and off his activity in response to glucose levels in the blood. This switch consists of two parts: a ring -shaped structure known as a macrocycle, and a glucoside, a molecule that is derived from glucose. If the blood sugar levels are low, the glucoside binds to the ring and holds the insulin in a closed, inactive state. However, when the glucose values in the blood rise, the sugar displaces the glucoside and changes the shape of the insulin so that it is activated.
The researchers tested the insulin molecule, which they called NNC2215, on pigs and rats that had received glucose infusions to simulate the effects of diabetes. They found that NNC2215 was just as effective when lowering blood sugar levels as normal human insulin when it was injected into the animals - and that it was able to prevent the waste of blood sugar that occurred in a conventional insulin treatment. "This is a very good study that is well designed - you carried out all the necessary experiments to validate that this works," says David Sacks, clinical chemist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "There are certainly encouraging indications that this approach is worth continuing."
The modified insulin is the first to specifically appeal to glucose, says Sacks. Weiss and his colleagues have previously demonstrated that an insulin molecule with a similar type of molecular switch was sensitive to another sugar molecule, fructose. 2
Some questions remain open to the latest molecule. On the one hand, the study looked at the activity of NNC2215 in a broader spectrum of blood sugar levels as typically observed in people with diabetes, so that future studies should show that insulin can also be effective in a narrower area, says Sacks. Further considerations concern the security and costs of this molecule, notes GU, biomedical engineer at the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. (GUS Team also develops a sugar-sensitive insulin molecule 3 .)
A spokesman for Novo Nordisk explains that this study is proof of the sugar -sensitive properties of NNC2215, but further research to optimize the molecule is still underway.
Several other intelligent insulin medication are under development, says Weiss, including one that designs their own team with a similar approach. Ultimately, the goal is to generate a number of intelligent insulin medication in order to enable doctors to customize therapies for their patients.
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HOEG-Jensen, T. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08042-3.
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Chen, Y.S. et al. Proc. Natl acad. Sci. USA 118, E2103518118 (2021).
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zhang, J. et al. Nature biomed. Closely. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-023-01138-7 (2023).