Scientists from the University of Granada and the Higher Council for Scientific Research have patented a new more stable insulin formulation to treat diabetes and with a technology that allows to develop more effective drugs from protein transformed into hydrogels.
The group of researchers has patented a new technology that allows to develop more effective drugs from previously transformed therapeutic proteins, a technique with which they achieve a new insulin formulation with greater stability and that is more effective for the treatment of diabetes.
These therapeutic proteins have a longer half -life than those that are currently used in the pharmaceutical industry, having been converted into crystals, and allow to produce new more effective pharmaceutical formulas and that, therefore, improve the patient's quality of life.
In a statement, researchers from the University of Granada Luis Álvarez de Cienfuegos and Juan José Díaz Mochón, authors of this work, have explained that the number of therapeutic proteins used for the treatment of different diseases has increased greatly in recent yearsThanks to the advancement of biotechnology, which modifies the pharmaceutical industry.
To improve the stability problems of these proteins, two different techniques that require their modification are used and in some cases they can cause a reduction in their activity and even toxicity.
The researchers at the Granada University, in collaboration with José Antonio Gavira Gallardo, of the CSIC crystallographic studies laboratory, have solved the problems that shorten the life of proteins and their stability thanks to a technology that does not modify their genetics or chemistry,It changes its state by transforming it into crystals.
The research has been developed with financing of the "Caixa Impulse" program and in collaboration with the groups of professors Fermín Sánchez de Medina, of the Department of Pharmacology, and Olga Martínez Augustin, of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology II of the Faculty of Pharmacy.
CSIC and the University of Granada have protected these results with a Spanish patent and since this month they have financing from the European Institute of Technology to accelerate "in vivo" studies and promote and facilitate the transfer of this technology to the market through the creation of a"spin-off" biotechnological.
