Introducing Cadisegliatin, a New Drug in the Type 1 Diabetes Pipeline by Ross Wollen for DiabetesDaily.com, 26 April 2024.

Cadisegliatin, an investigative therapy currently entering phase 3 trials, could be the next important drug, after insulin, indicated for Type 1 diabetes. “Cadi,” as its backers have nicknamed it, works in concert with insulin by helping to improve the liver’s glucose regulation system.

Early results suggest that cadisegliatin can flexibly regulate blood glucose levels in response to need by instructing the liver to absorb glucose when there is too much of it in the bloodstream and helping it release stored glucose when there is too little. The result is reduced A1C and reduced risk of hypoglycemia, all at the same time. Investors just made a big bet on cadisegliatin’s potential, committing $51 million to vTv Therapeutics, the biopharmaceutical company developing the drug according to Thomas Strack, MD, the business’ chief medical officer.

In type 1 diabetes, however, both insulin and glucagon signaling are dysfunctional, and neither is fully corrected by the insulin we inject underneath the skin. The insulin administered by needles, pens, and pumps starts on the body’s periphery and then travels throughout the circulatory system; it cannot mimic the natural liver-signaling activity of insulin, which travels directly to the liver through the portal vein.

Meanwhile, people with type 1 diabetes still secrete glucagon, sometimes too much of it. Without a concentrated insulin source to counterbalance, the liver doesn’t take up as much glucose as it should, increasing blood sugar levels and reducing the amount of stored sugar available for emergencies.  “The lack of insulin in the liver cannot be compensated with current insulin delivery technology,” says Dr. Strack.  “How can we help the liver regain its normal activity?”

Read more:  Introducing Cadisegliatin, a New Drug in the Type 1 Diabetes Pipeline

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Diabetes Driving Pal Helps People with Diabetes Stay Safe Behind the Wheel posted by StartUpHealth.com for Moonshot Type 1 Diabetes.

“Many of my patients with Type 1 diabetes confided in me about experiencing low blood sugar episodes while driving,” says Viral Shah, MD, an endocrinologist at Indiana University. He was shocked and concerned, but since he works as a clinical researcher, that wasn’t enough – he wanted more data points. Dr. Shah conducted a survey at the Barbara Davies Center in Colorado, his previous institution, and it revealed that a staggering 72% of respondents reported experiencing at least one low blood sugar episode while driving and even more concerning, 4% admitted to having had a vehicular accident due to low blood sugar in the previous two years. Interestingly, more than 90% of the survey population used continuous glucose monitors and/or insulin pumps. The study was published in the journal Diabetes Care. 

The Diabetes Driving Pal app acts as a copilot for drivers with Type 1 diabetes. It will be designed to integrate with existing continuous glucose monitoring systems (CGMs), which provide real-time blood sugar readings. A Tiered Alert System is designed to gently guide you back into the safe zone. Here’s how it works:

• • • For slightly low blood sugar readings, the app provides a discreet alert, similar to standard CGM notifications. This is your chance to take a preventative sip of juice or a quick bite of food to raise your blood sugar.
    • Personalized Intervention: If your blood sugar continues to drop rapidly, the app kicks into a higher gear. Utilizing your pre-set preferences and location data, it suggests nearby options to raise your blood sugar levels, like a Starbucks or a convenience store with sugary snacks.
      • Emergency Action: In the most critical situations, where blood sugar plummets to a medically dangerous level, the app doesn’t hesitate. It automatically calls a designated emergency contact or 911, ensuring you receive the help you need.

Read more: Diabetes Driving Pal Helps People with Diabetes Stay Safe Behind the Wheel

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People treated by female doctors tend to have better health outcomes by Elizabeth Pratt for MedicalNewsToday.com, 22 April 2024.

People treated by female physicians have lower rates of mortality and readmission than those treated by male physicians. That’s according to research published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.  In their study, researchers reported that there was a clinically significant difference in outcomes for people depending on the gender of their treating physician.

“What our findings indicate is that female and male physicians practice medicine differently, and these differences have a meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes,” Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, a senior author of the study and an associate professor-in-residence of medicine in the division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, said in a press statement.

The researchers say there could be several potential reasons for the difference in outcomes between female and male physicians according to Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor and medical director at the University of California San Francisco.

• • • Female physicians spend more time with patients and engage in shared medical decision-making and partnership discussions than male counterparts.
    • Female physicians spend more time on the electronic health record than male counterparts and deliver higher quality care. In the surgical realm, female physicians spend longer on a surgical procedure and have lower rates of postoperative readmissions.

Read more: People treated by female doctors tend to have better health outcomes

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UnitedHealth says hackers possibly stole large number of Americans’ data by Manas Mishra and Zeba Siddiqui for Reuters.com, 22 April 2024.

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New findings on pancreatic anatomy may affect diabetes research and treatment by Claes Bjornberg for Medicalxpress.com, 22 April 2024.

Researchers at Umeå University have succeeded in imaging an entire human organ, a pancreas, in microscopic resolution. By staining different cell-types with antibodies and then using optical 3D imaging techniques to study the entire organ, their data provides a partially new picture of the pancreas.  The results may be of great importance for diabetes research, especially when developing various new forms of treatment. The study is published in Nature Communications.

The pancreas is a key organ for the development of diabetes, a disease that today affects over half a billion people. It contains millions of small cell clusters, the so-called islets of Langerhans, which function to regulate blood sugar levels in the body.  “By dividing the entire organ into smaller parts, we enable the antibodies to get where they need to go. Since we know where each piece comes from, we can then, after scanning the different parts individually, ‘reassemble’ the entire pancreas again using computer software. This allows us to perform a plethora of calculations and study which cell-types are present, as well as where they are located in 3D space, as we know the 3D coordinates, their volume, shape and other parameters for each and every stained object in the entire organ,” says Ahlgren.

In addition to new data on how insulin-producing cells are distributed in the pancreas, the researchers now show that glucagon-producing cells are not present in as many as 50% of the Islets of Langerhans that do contain insulin cells. This is contrary to what was previously thought, where islets were believed to contain both insulin- and glucagon-expressing cell-types with the same islet.

“This was a surprise to us, and I believe that these results may be of great importance for diabetes research.

• • • First, it shows that the islets have a much more uneven composition, or cellularity, than previously thought. This could mean that islets of different composition might be specifically specialized to respond to different signals and/or operate in different metabolic environments. 
    • “Second, a great deal of research in the diabetes field is carried out on isolated islets of Langerhans from deceased donors. Since we also show that this uneven composition is largely linked to islet size, it means that results from such experiments may not fully reflect how the islets are structured and function in the living pancreas. 

Read more:  New findings on pancreatic anatomy may affect diabetes research and treatment

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Too Little Sleep Raises Health Risks for Teens With T1D by Shrabasti Bhattacharya for MedScape.com, 17 April 2024.

Less than 7 hours of sleep per night is common in individuals with type 1 diabetes (T1D) but is tied to poor cardiometabolic health, particularly in adolescents.

 

• • • Most adolescents (62%) and adults (74%) with T1D reported less than 7 hours of sleep at baseline.
    • Participants with insufficient sleep vs those without insufficient sleep (< 7 vs > 7 hours) had a larger waist circumference and higher mean body mass index, systolic blood pressure, and pulse pressure, as well as lower estimated insulin sensitivity and brachial artery distensibility (P < .05 for all).
    • When stratified by age, only adolescents with T1D with insufficient sleep had significant differences in most health outcomes by sleep duration status.

Read more: Too Little Sleep Raises Health Risks for Teens With T1D

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Vertex and TreeFrog Therapeutics Announce Licensing Agreement and Collaboration to Optimize Production of Vertex’s Cell Therapies for Type 1 Diabetes in Vertex press release, 23 April 2024.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated and TreeFrog Therapeutics announced that Vertex has obtained an exclusive license to TreeFrog’s proprietary cell manufacturing technology, C-StemTM, to optimize the production of Vertex’s cell therapies for type 1 diabetes (T1D). TreeFrog and Vertex will collaborate to scale up TreeFrog’s process to produce and amplify cells for Vertex’s T1D therapies.

TreeFrog’s proprietary technology platform, C-Stem™, is designed to mimic the natural microenvironment, allowing cells to grow exponentially in 3D. The technology will enhance Vertex’s ability to generate large amounts of fully differentiated cells for its portfolio of T1D cell therapies.

“Our goal is to transform the treatment of T1D, and our stem cell-derived, fully differentiated islet cell  VX-880 Ph 1/2  program has demonstrated this potential,” said Morrey Atkinson Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Chief Technical Operations Officer, Head of Biopharmaceutical Sciences and Manufacturing Operations, at Vertex. “We’re excited to explore TreeFrog’s C-StemTM to scale up stem cell production and deliver for the large number of people living with T1D.”

Read more: Vertex and TreeFrog Therapeutics Announce Licensing Agreement and Collaboration

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Shortages for Mounjaro, Zepbound, and Others to Last Through Summer by April Hopcroft for diaTribe.org, 22 April 2024.

According to a recent update by the FDA, shortages for Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound will persist through at least June 2024. Because of the unprecedented demand for these medications, many are in limited supply. The latest update from the FDA notes that the shortages for Mounjaro and Zepbound will last through at least June 2024. An earlier FDA announcement had said some doses would be in short supply through April 2024.

This news follows a shortage of Ozempic, which began in late 2022 and has since been resolved, according to the FDA. However, the FDA lists all doses of the weight loss medication Wegovy, which contains the same active ingredient as Ozempic (semaglutide), as having limited availability due to increased demand. 

Mounjaro and Zepbound have the same active ingredient (tirzepatide) and come in 2.5 mg, 5 mg, 7.5 mg, 10 mg, 12.5 mg, and 15 mg injection pens. According to the FDA, all doses of Mounarjo and Zepbound except the 2.5 mg starter dose have limited availability through the end of June 2024. Similarly, all doses of Wegovy except the lowest dose (2.4 mg) have limited availability. The FDA has not provided an estimate for how long the Wegovy shortage will last. The type 2 diabetes medication Trulicity (dulaglutide) is also experiencing similar shortages, with all doses except the lowest (0.75 mg) having limited availability through June 2024. 

Read more: Shortages for Mounjaro, Zepbound, and Others to Last Through Summer

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How Ozempic Is Transforming a Small Danish Town by Eshe Nelson for NYTimes.com, 20 April 2024.

Kalundborg, a small town about 60 miles west of Copenhagen, is expected to change soon as the it benefits from America’s scramble for weight-loss drugs. Nearby, at a sprawling manufacturing plant, Novo Nordisk makes nearly all of its semaglutide, the active ingredient in the company’s wildly popular diabetes and obesity treatments Ozempic and Wegovy. The company has been in Kalundborg for half a century but in the past two years announced it would invest 60 billion kroner, or about $8.6 billion, into expanding the facilities here. It’s the largest manufacturing investment in Denmark by a company, and it’s happening in this town of fewer than 17,000 people.

The money is part of Novo Nordisk’s global transformation to ramp up production of its best-selling drugs, but perhaps nowhere will feel the impact like this coastal community. Novo Nordisk plans to add 1,250 jobs to the existing 4,500 employees at the Kalundborg plant. A highway is being extended; investors are snapping up houses and planning new construction; universities have begun offering biotech courses to feed Novo Nordisk and nearby businesses with workers.

Mr. Shaun Gamble, who opened his Costa Kalundborg Kaffe four years ago after working at a nearby Novo Nordisk warehouse, is optimistic. “In five years it’ll be a totally different town,” he said. “That’s what I’m betting on.”

Novo Nordisk is already reshaping Denmark’s economy. The country’s economy grew 1.9 percent last year, among the fastest in Europe and all thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, led by Novo Nordisk. Without it, the economy would have stagnated.  Nearly all of Novo Nordisk’s revenue is earned overseas,more than half in the United States alone.

Read more: How Ozempic Is Transforming a Small Danish Town

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Roasted green tea, a Japanese staple, could boost cognitive performance by Kelsey Costa for MedicalNewsToday.com, 22 April 2024.

Roasted green tea, also known as houjicha, is a Japanese green tea roasted over charcoal to give the tea a unique smoky flavor and dark brown color.

Previous research has highlighted the cognitive benefits of green tea consumption, though the research has often focused on long-term effects, individual compounds in isolation, or high consumption. Now, a recent study published in Scientific Reports explored the potential acute impacts of roasted green tea and green tea consumption on mental task performance compared to plain water.  The findings suggest that even small daily servings of green tea or roasted green tea may significantly improve task performance and mental well-being.

Compared to drinking hot water, tea consumption during tasks resulted in significantly lower tissue blood volume (TBV), tissue blood flow (TBF), and near-infrared spectroscopy responses (NIRS) in participants. These results suggest that drinking green tea or roasted green tea may have helped moderate the participants’ physiological stress responses. Aromatic compounds present in green tea, known to have relaxation effects, appeared to play a significant role in these positive outcomes.

Read more: Roasted green tea, a Japanese staple, could boost cognitive performance