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Growing Insulin
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:02 PM
from the hormones-growing dept.
from the hormones-growing dept.
McLuhanesque writes "The Globe and Mail reports that a Calgary biotech firm has developed a process to turn genetically modified safflower oil into human insulin in commercial quantities. The process reduces capital costs by 70% and product cost by 40%. 'SemBioSys says it can make more than one kilogram of human insulin per acre of safflower production. That amount could treat 2,500 diabetic patients for one year and, in turn, meet the world's total projected insulin demand in 2010 with less than 16,000 acres of safflower production.'"
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That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that a cure is viewed as better than a treatment, but you can't just pick to find a cure, or pick to find a treatment. Reducing the costs of producing human insulin, and at the same time gaining additional scientific knowledge should be of great use. Who knows, perhaps a cure to type I diabetes is now one step closer?
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
What utter nonsense. Even if insulin was cheaper than air, who in the world would lose interest in not having to monitor his blood sugar and take injections, risk blindness, amputation, and all other hazards of diabetes?
-jcr
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're the ones who would benefit financially from not having to pay for complications of diabetes. It seems that you don't have much understanding of the economics of insurance. Curing diabetes will save tens of billions of dollars, no matter how cheap insulin gets.
-jcr
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Retail: a bottle of insulin is $20. That lasts me approximately 14 days
In those 14 days I will use between 70 and 140 test strips, which cost about $.50 a piece. So lets say $50.
Also - in those 14 days I will use 5 sets of supplies for my insulin pump. At $17 a pop, that's $85
Out of that total $155, the insulin is only 13% of the cost. Granted the insurance company doesnt pay retail for anything, and I absorb a small fraction of the cost through deductibles, but it will still end up only being 13% of the cost of the daily supplies.
And let's not talk about the $5,000 insulin pump that only works for 4 years, or all the doctors visits, blood work, ER visits if I become sick......
A cure for Type 1 diabetes would save the insurance companies a fair amount of money in the mid-term, and extremely large amounts of money in the long term.
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:3, Informative)
The pharmacutical companies don't control all medical research. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) spent ~$28 BILLION last year funding medical research. That's your tax dollars at work. Most of the money went to Un
Re:So start a non-profit (Score:3, Informative)
The medical fie
Cures already available (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that each group of researchers will have their own specialisations, and that not everyone COULD work on a cure, even if there was no need for improved/cheaper insulin (which there is). I heartily agree with the grandparent poster though; insulin is a poor substitute for a normal life, and a cure would be MUCH better, so it would be nice to see the main focus going on that. The medical fees that entire nations pay for insulin, needles, swabs, glucometers, diagnostics strips, tablets, etc. -- often four or more of most of these things per day, per patient, at £0.50 per diagnostic strip alone, must make up a pretty large profit for medical companies. I really don't mean to accuse people of being motivated by money, but I do often wonder if this doesn't sometimes subtly cloud their sense of what's really best for the sufferers.
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:3, Informative)
It would have been nice to know which country you are talking about. The USA seems to be the 'default' country on /. (because of # of US participants), but your co
flamebaiter is Workin' Hard For You (Score:3, Insightful)
Mods, how the
Re:flamebaiter is Workin' Hard For You (Score:3, Informative)
But put the Fed money to work where it shows the most promise - and that most definitely is *not* embryonic stem cells. So stop
could someone do back-of-envelope calculation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:could someone do back-of-envelope calculation (Score:2, Insightful)
What's making them become diabetic is:
Re:could someone do back-of-envelope calculation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:could someone do back-of-envelope calculation (Score:5, Informative)
There are two main types of diabetes (with a couple of oddball variants that are rare, diabetes mellitus describes the final symptom of elevated bloodsugar, there are a few possible root causes of that symptom, which determine the type). Type I is known as insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes (because it is rarely diagnosed past the age of 20). It is caused by the immune system attacking the beta cells of the pancreas. Eventually all beta cells die and the body can no longer produce any insulin, so it must be provided from an external source. Type I is generally considered to be the "severe" form of diabetes because of this fact. Prior to the discovery of insulin, average life expectancy after diagnosis was 1-2 years, and the disease killed younger children faster than teenagers. Oh, it was a rather slow, painful, and unpleasant death too. Essentially no matter how much you ate and drank, your body would slowly dehydrate and starve.
Type II is usually referred to simply as adult-onset diabetes, because until recently, it has been unheard of for young people to develop it. (A high prevalence of childhood obesity is changing this). In Type II diabetes, the body does produce insulin, but for various reasons it is not enough, whether it is due to reduced capacity or increased demands beyond normal capacity, or a combination of both. Most of the time, once diagnosed, Type II diabetes can be managed solely with oral medication which increases the body's sensitivity to the insulin it does produce, and in many cases controlled solely with diet and exercise. (Losing weight can often cause Type II diabetes to disappear.) It is extremely rare for Type II to require external insulin rejections. Interestingly enough, while Type II is less "severe", this very fact makes it far more dangerous because it frequently goes undiagnosed for long periods of time, and the elevated bloodsugars do damage to various parts of the body.
This is definately an interesting development, but how will this company deal with patented "designer" insulins such as Lantus (from Aventis Pharmaceutical, a special "peakless" insulin used to provide a long-acting baseline insulin dose), and Novolog/Humalog, two "extremely rapid acting" insulins that actually take effect FASTER than injecting normal human insulin. FYI, "human insulin" is insulin produced by genetically engineered bacteria that is identical to human insulin, it is NOT extracted from humans, unlike pork and beef insulins which were extracted from the pancreases of pigs and cows respectively. While I'm sure their technology will work with Lantus and Humalog/Novolog, I don't know how the companies that produce the above three will react to this. Most likely they'll license the technology from this new company (if it works) or vice versa... I hope so.
Mod parent up (Score:2, Informative)
Re:could someone do back-of-envelope calculation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:could someone do back-of-envelope calculation (Score:3, Informative)
Positively fantastic news (Score:5, Insightful)
For there to be a light at the end of this proverbial tunnel is amazing news. Let's hope that this continues to be researched, tried and brought to the general population with as little convolusion from outside sources as possible.
Sadly, medicine is still business first and foremost. Some drug company will make a mint from this. Let's hope that someone somewhere has a conscience that won't allow them to make this treatment as financially restrictive as most everything else is.
Re:Positively fantastic news (Score:2, Informative)
Not forgetting the most recent articles posted about the links to Alzheimers [upi.com]
Re:Positively fantastic news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Positively fantastic news (Score:2)
You mean in 16 years when the patent expires and anyone can do it, right?
Most likely they'll charge the exact same as everyone else (ie, at least as much as the insurance companies will pay)
Re:Positively fantastic news (Score:3, Informative)
Tollerance Build up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tollerance Build up (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look at the research being done on Retinol binding proteins. Apparently, there's some kind of relationship between RBP's and insulin resistance.
Temkin
Let me be the first.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me be the first.. (Score:2)
There's a "day of the triffids" joke in there somewhere...
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, pharmacutical companies are beginning to persuade food companies to put MORE SUGAR into foods....
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Now if they could only... (Score:5, Funny)
Sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
HFCS (Score:3, Insightful)
Bring on the High-Fructose Corn Syrup [newstarget.com]. Drink more Dew. Drink more Sprite. Obey your thirst. Feed your kids drinks with less than 100% fruit juice.
Tongue in cheak of course.
Almost reminds you of the idea people have with introducing insects into non-native environments and the bug turns out to be hostile so they introduce a second bug to kill the first, but which turns out to be worse than the first.
Re:HFCS (Score:5, Insightful)
Cross contamination (Score:3, Interesting)
Certainly like GM food, GM plant for medicine production is a great advancement. I just worry about these things getting into the wild, since the GM companies have had such a devil may care attitude in the past. Despite the statement of work for the public good, profits never seem to be cut in a effort to make the product safer, or the distribution widespread.
Knowing the drug companies . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
And the consumer price will be increased by 20%.
Re:Knowing the drug companies . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
The insulin market is highly competitive. There's also many varities of insulin. If this one can't make a splash on price or on some other quality, it'll go nowhere.
As much as I dislike the AMA-FDA/Congress-Insurance-Pharma cartel, in this instance it's not all that accurate.
what about generic insulin? (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out joinleenow.org - they need $11 million (they have $9 million so far) to test a possible treatment and cure using BCG, which I think costs $11 a vial. It amazes me how little support they're getting (maby because it could cure/treat diabetes on the cheap?). So far they have reversed 90% of type 1 diabetic mice.
Scientifically ok, economically, very unlikely (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:*Cough* (Score:3, Funny)
Re:*Cough* (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This isnt a breakthrough, it's genetic engineer (Score:3, Insightful)
but lets please not mix plants and animals, it's obviously not right.
There's no such thing as a "plant gene" or an "animal gene". It's like saying that taking a spring from a car and putting it in a bicycle makes the bicycle somehow car-like. Sure, if yo
Re:You are wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
and the genes in a plant are VASTLY VASTLY different from the genes in a human.
Some of them are, some of them aren't. We still share MANY of the same genes with plants. Just like a car is vastly different from a bicycle, both have rubber tires. In a ver
Re:You are wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You are wrong (Score:4, Funny)
That's just sick !
Save the bananas !
Re:This isnt a breakthrough, it's genetic engineer (Score:4, Funny)
It's in Leviticus: "A restriction enzyme that touches a plant chromosome shall not touch an animal chromosome, lest there be an abomination." You can't argue with a commandment like that. Why do you hate G-d?
The article is scant on details (Score:5, Interesting)
Compared to a big churning vat of E. Coli, their food, and their waste products, it's easier to use something like an impeller or centrifuge to separate out bulk quantities of insulin-laced oil from a plant, and then purify it from there.
Also, those same fermenters that are growing insulin currently are also a great breeding ground for other bacteria, molds, and yeasts in the environment. I'm given to understand that keeping unwanted organisms out of the vats is part of what makes the process difficult and expensive. A single bacterium or wild yeast spore that gets into a fermenter can ruin the whole batch.
The macroscopic plants are a much more robust system - they can still get sick of course, but it's fairly easy to keep plants healthy. And even given that you can't spray these plants willy-nilly with pesticides, organic farmers get pretty good yields on most products with just natural controls.
Re:How can this work? (Score:3, Insightful)