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| Apollo leads the way with revolutionary oral insulin delivery |
No more needles | The global market for diabetes therapies is worth a massive US$18 billion annually. Globally 246 million people have diabetes and this is increasing at a rate of 7 million per year, according to figures from the International Diabetes Federation. In Australia, the government spends more than $135m on the PBS to supply injectable insulin to people with diabetes (PWDs).
One of the goals of Big Pharma is the development of a tablet that can be taken by PWDs in preference to their daily injections. A tablet is not only more convenient than injections – it is a far superior method of delivering insulin into the body because it travels more directly to the liver.
Previously the sticking point in developing an oral treatment for diabetes was that the acid in the stomach dissolved insulin before it could get into the bloodstream.
Apollo is poised to revolutionise things for people with diabetes with its groundbreaking patented technology that protects insulin from being broken down in the stomach, enabling it to reach the liver, where it can do its work. The liver is the key organ controlling insulin levels. After a meal insulin signals the liver to shut off production of glucose in the pancreas. Effectively the liver tells the rest of the body when it needs more glucose and when it needs less.
Why is oral insulin better than injections? Taking a tablet rather than an injection mimics the way the human body uses insulin to control glucose levels. A tablet goes from the stomach straight to the liver and then on to the muscles. Injections do just the reverse: working from the periphery (the arms, legs etc) to the liver.
If a tablet is a more efficient way to control diabetes – why hasn’t it become available? Put simply, no company until Apollo has been able to develop an oral form of insulin that escapes the destructive acidic environment of the stomach and travels into circulation.
In February Apollo announced that it had successfully completed toxicology trials for its orally delivered insulin. Preclinical trials have already shown that Oradel™ insulin brings blood glucose levels into the normal range and holds them there for sustained periods of time. Scientists at Apollo are working towards Phase 2 trials of the drug to see whether it is safe and works in humans. They are quietly confident it can. |
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