Two companies across two continents are partnering to bring an artificial pancreas to the market. Cellnovo, a French company known for it’s connected insulin patch pump, has partnered with TypeZero Technologies to create an artificial pancreas system for people with Type 1 diabetes.
The system will rely on Dexcom’s continuous glucose meter to monitor glucose levels, TypeZero’s inControl artificial pancreas software to calculate management of blood sugar levels and insulin delivery, and Cellnovo’s patch pump to administer insulin as needed.
The system will begin testing in the second half of 2016, and has been funded with a $12.8 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health. The study, dubbed the International Diabetes Closed Loop Trial, will take place on nine sites in the U.S. and Europe and will last six months. The trial will include 240 patients with Type 1 diabetes for the first six months, then follow up with 180 of those patients for an additional six months. It’s too early in the process to estimate potential release dates for the final product.
The two companies join an increasingly crowded field of those who want to commercialize some form of an artificial pancreas system. Medtronic is making overtures that it will have such a pump system ready for market in 2017. Bigfoot Biomedical and Beta Bionics are also working hard to sell their own artificial pancreas systems in the near term.
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