3 ms·
It's always a decade away because the progress promised shows up, and it improves quality of life a bit, but isn't enough and is very expensive. We've gotten a
by mlyle 2y ago
It's always a decade away because the progress promised shows up, and it improves quality of life a bit, but isn't enough and is very expensive.
We've gotten a variety of synthetic insulins with different rates that help control the disease. We've gotten pumps and meters and very cautious closed-loop feedback.
Now, an insulin itself that adjusts its potency based on blood sugar. We'll get that in the next decade or a bit more. But it'll be very expensive and it will be a relatively ineffective control mechanism-- making control a little bit easier for diabetics and blunting worst case episodes a bit.
- caseyy 2y agoI agree that many types of treatments have been advancing. Closed loop is a good example, and stem cell-based islet transplants are in real clinical trials now. We have gotten synthetic insulins that act much faster like Fiasp and stuff like Tresiba that's a multi-day action time prolonged insulin. GLP1 inhibitors are more commonly available for T1Ds, especially now that they are in weight loss drugs that doctors are starting to more easily prescribe off-label to T1s. Metformin has basically become on-label for T1Ds due to its benefits to insulin sensitivity. But the smart insulin hasn't made much progress for the last several decades. I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom. I'm bringing attention to different rates these things evolve at and questioning why GRIs haven't left the lab since the 90s. :)
- mlyle 2y agoThe molecular GRI work in the 90s was really proof of concept work that showed you could maybe build something like this, not something that looked a decade from approval. From what I remember, the early work spun off free radicals, had the middle of its set-point in the wrong place, and its "gain" was minimal.