A team of chemists, polymer scientists, and drug delivery specialists from Zhejiang University in China, along with a pair of colleagues from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US, have developed a type of “smart” insulin that successfully controlled blood glucose levels in real mouse and minipig after just one injection, according to medicalxpress last week.
Their research published in the journal “Nature Biomedical Engineering” describes how they manufactured the smart insulin, how it functions, and how well it worked when administered to diabetic mice and minipigs.
Diabetes type I is a long-term disease in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. People with the illness are treated with a restricted diet and insulin injections on a regular basis. Many diabetics must inject themselves more than once a day, a painful and arduous regimen—the skin around injection sites hardens with time, making it harder to insert a needle.
The study team created a kind of insulin that responds with certain substances in the body, allowing for long-term “automatic” management of glucose levels in the blood.
The new smart insulin is a modified version of an existing insulin. The researchers added gluconic acid, which when administered into the body turns into a complex compound as it binds with substances in the blood. Such complexes cause insulin to become trapped inside a natural polymer, causing changes in signaling.
Depending on blood glucose levels, different quantities of insulin are produced. The researchers discovered that this allowed more insulin to be released into the blood circulation when it was needed and less when it was not.
The researchers put their modified insulin to the test on three minipigs and five mice that had been genetically modified to have diabetes. Two minipigs were given a large dose, while the third was given a lesser dose.
The study team discovered that the minipig given the low dosage had the most consistent glucose regulation compared to the other minipigs given a high dose and also compared to control minipigs given daily injections of normal insulin.
The researchers believe their findings hold promise for a novel sort of therapy for people with type 1 diabetes. They will continue to test their smart insulin in animals and, if everything goes well, move on to human trials.