Demand $35 Price Cap on Insulin
During his March 1 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called for a $35 price cap on the cost of insulin. Join us in urging your Senators and Representatives to pass the Affordable Insulin Now Act so that people with diabetes can get the medicine they need to survive. This essential piece of legislation would require Medicare plans and private insurance plans to cap patients’ out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 per month.
The $35 price cap would increase access to diabetes care for millions on Medicare and private insurance plans. Join us and tell Congress to support this legislation.
We have heard countless and unconscionable stories about the dangers of rationing insulin, yet one in four people in the US with diabetes have been forced to ration their insulin due to the unaffordable price. No person should ever feel the need to restrict their use of a drug that people with diabetes cannot manage to miss a single dose.
You can help people with diabetes get the insulin that they need to survive. Join us in advocating for affordable insulin for people with diabetes. Urge Congress to support this legislation.
Click to Advocate: I Need INSULIN to LIVE
New Drug to Prevent Hypoglycemia Enters Clinical Trials was announced by JDRF.ca, 23 February 2022.
Canadian company Zucara Therapeutics is developing a once-daily therapy, called ZT-01, that restores a person with T1D’s glucagon response so that they can counter-regulate hypoglycemia. On February 8, 2022, they announced that the peer-reviewed journal, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, published a paper reporting positive preclinical data on its diabetes drug ZT-01, which is currently in a Phase 1b clinical trial for the treatment of insulin-induced hypoglycemia in patients with Type 1 diabetes (T1D).
“We are thrilled with the positive results of this preclinical study, whose efficacy portion employed a similar methodology to that of our ongoing Phase 1b clinical trial,” said Richard Liggins, Zucara Therapeutics’ Chief Scientific Officer. “This study demonstrated that ZT-01 significantly increased glucagon secretion in rats with T1D, and reduced the frequency and severity of hypoglycemia, suggesting ZT-01’s potential to reduce hypoglycemia exposure in humans with T1D.”
If approved, this would be the first once-daily therapeutic for people with T1D to help reduce the effects of hypoglycemia, one of the most common complications of the disease.
Read more: New Drug to Prevent Hypoglycemia Enters Clinical Trials
A group of hospitals has a plan to get around Congress’s refusal to lower the cost of insulin reported by Christopher Rowland for WashingtonPost.com, 3 March 2022.
A consortium of large U.S. hospitals, which four years ago pioneered a system to alleviate chronic shortages of inpatient drugs by producing its own, is seeking to further disrupt the pharmaceutical system with a bid to dramatically slash insulin costs for diabetics. The consortium’s nonprofit company, Civica Rx, said Thursday it plans to manufacture and sell generic versions of insulin at no more than $30 per vial and $55 for five injector-pen cartridges, a fraction of list prices that currently range from $125 to more than $500.
The company said it expects to begin selling insulin in 2024, once it completes construction of a 140,000-square-foot pharmaceutical plant in Petersburg, Va. It also must win licensing from the Food and Drug Administration. The problem of escalating insulin prices has been exacerbated by a lack of generic competition. Generics have been slow to arrive for insulin, a 100-year-old discovery, because it’s a biological drug, requiring a special “biosimilar” regulatory framework from the Food and Drug Administration that was not fully established until 2020.
“Clearly there’s this burning need to do something in the best interest of patients,” Civica Rx CEO Martin VanTrieste said in an interview. “We want to be that biosimilar company that sets a standard, that brings quality insulin at the lowest sustainable price.”
Read more:
Redefining diabetes spotlight: Seniors was written by Christopher Snider for Tidepool.org, 25 February 2022.
The nuances that come with managing diabetes in conjunction with the challenges that come with age are often overlooked. We recently conducted a webinar with a panel of experts including Dr. Irl Hirsch, Dr. Michelle Litchman, Dr. Nancy Allen, and Joanne Milo to share their insights on the unique challenges of the aging population with diabetes.
what we learned is that we needed far more than an hour and that there is so much opportunity for change. This particular webinar ended up concentrating a lot on the hospital experience – because as we age, the likelihood of being hospitalized for something that is not diabetes-related increases. We realize there is an opportunity for more focused discussions around additional struggles that come with aging, and we look forward to facilitating those conversations.
Read more: Redefining diabetes spotlight: Seniors
I do not know about the insulin facility. Obtaining the licensing agreements will be difficult. perhaps it will work out and if it does it will be revolutionary.