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Features Artificial Pancreas
Faster bolus insulin absorption is the goal of InsuPatch and InsuPad, each of which uses heat applied to the infusion or injection area. It’s an “old tech” approach to insulin therapy (does anyone remember hot water bottles?) designed to shorten time to peak, reduce insulin use, and cut down on hypoglycemic events.
AFREZZA is a technology-cum-therapy that delivers bolus insulin for mealtime glycemic control. It combines a small inhaler with an aspirin-size caplet of insulin bonded to a fine, powdery substance that, when inhaled, makes man-made recombinant insulin act very much like the naturally produced counterpart
A 1.5 MM needle about the thickness of a human hair is being tested by BD. There’s no need to fear injections if you can’t even feel them.
A conversation with Dr. Aaron Kowalski, Vice President of Treatment Therapies at JDRF, touches on ongoing work in creating an artificial pancreas, developing more rapidly-absorbed insulins, and making a stable, liquid glucagon for bi-hormonal pumps. This isn’t research for its own sake: these days, a clear “path to market” is a hallmark of JDRF research grants.
Few, if any, people can match Terry Gregg’s perspective on both the business and technology of continuous glucose monitoring. IN sat down with Gregg for this interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2013.
Boston University Associate Professor and inventor Ed Damiano tells the story behind his bionic pancreas.
When the history of the first successful closed-loop diabetes management system is written, David Damiano’s name may be mentioned only in passing. This will not be surprising, since David, age 13, played no role in writing the algorithms and testing the meshed technologies that will make life infinitely easier and safer for people with type 1 diabetes. He is, however, the principal reason the system will exist. His father, Ed, coinvented the “bionic pancreas” to keep him safe. The system will represent a father’s love, distilled into a mathematical formula.
Ed Damiano talks about his son David’s diagnosis with Type 1 Diabetes in 2000 that motivated him to try to create an artificial pancreas that could take over human care and provide high quality glucose management automatically for everyone.
Researchers at the University of Virginia Are Testing Their Device on Outpatients.
Medtronic’s low glucose suspend, a key part of their closed-loop system-to-be, is coming to the U.S. Soon.
There is an old saw that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, and Ed Damiano’s relationship with Dr. Steven Russell is a perfect example of the saying in action. In 2006, when Damiano came to the Joslin Diabetes Center to give a talk about the experiments he was doing on pigs, using an early version of the bionic pancreas. Russell happened to be in the audience.
