Gorka Orive, Alavés Professor of the UPV/EHU, investigates to create a drug capable of controlling the blood sugar level of the diabetics without clicking insulin
Diabetes is an epidemic that does not stop growing and that increasingly affects developed countries.To combat it, researchers like Gorka Orive use latest technology to make new medications that allow diabetics to live without injections.Investigations that Orive himself will reveal this afternoon, at 7:00 p.m. at the Azkuna Zentroa, in the last talk of the Chair of Scientific Culture of the UPV/EHU.
Are there many advances to treat diabetes?
-Yeah.There are better insulins, more forms of administration with new infusors that are like minibombes that are putting insulin to save the injections.Now, the next step is the elaboration of biological medicines.
Are they working on that?
-Yes, our research aims to design a new medicine in the form of insulin microfabricas to treat diabetes.One of the most positive aspects of this drug is that with an injection it should be sufficient for the patient to control their blood glucose, that is, their blood glucose, for quite some time.
How long?
-We don't know if it will be a month, several, or a semester.Or even more, if everything were fine.In such a way that the patient could reduce the number of punctures or could even avoid exogenous insulin injection because that medicine would be able to function autonomously.
But for now they do not include evidence in humans.
-No.At the moment we will test it in research animals.We are going to prove its effectiveness and safety in the laboratory, with mice.If the results were positive, we would complete stages.The project has started earlier this year and has a semester in preparation.We are in the first architecture of what is going to be the design of the medicine and its first evaluations in the laboratory.And then we would go to animals.The objective until 2019 is to create it and evaluate it.
This is a biological drug.What are the characteristics of such a living medication?
-All the world knows what a conventional medication is, a capsule, a tablet, an injectable syringe ... This is a medication that is alive because in its composition there are living cells.And it is a drug that would have to be injected.We would inject a very large number of small balls less than half a millimeter.Many tiny balls that as a whole form the medication.Within those balls there will be healthy cells, which work, and that are able to respond by releasing insulin.Since the patient has its defective pancreatic cells and do not produce insulin, we intend to create a kind of new pancreas, a bioartificial pancreas.
When working with living organisms, is production more complex?
-Yeah.This is not a drug that comes in a blister.It would be necessary to prepare it in a hospital and it would be necessary to see what is the way to manufacture it on a larger scale.If we have some cells that work well and can be included in those balls, which are microfábrica, we would inject them into animals.If there are no adverse effects, we would take the following steps.
The UPV does not work alone in this project.
-This drug is part of a multidisciplinary research project financed with a telemarathon program in Catalonia.In addition to the UPV, it includes two other research groups of universities/hospitals in Barcelona.It is a project that has started this year and will end in 2019.
Would the drug were designed to the letter for each patient?
-We would think about it.These types of biological medications do not follow the guidelines of the traditional pharmaceutical industry.They would have to haveother guidelines that remain to be defined.It would be necessary to take patient cells and make them respond to glucose levels.Design synthetic biology for those cells or perhaps look for a cell pattern that could serve for everyone.That would allow industrializing it in a more feasible way.But, for now, that is very anticipated.
Are there many biological medications in the market?
-They are gaining weight.When I studied the pharmacy career just over that, but now there is a significant percentage.Keep in mind that what we intend to do is complex, but there are other simpler ones that have a faster clinic such as monoclonal antibodies.Or growth factors.Some are also used for cancer treatment.Another very clear example is the antibodies that are used to avoid retinopathies that are punctured in the eye many diabetic patients.
