Private Equity-Like Fund Aims To Speed Up Diabetes Research

Private Equity-Like Fund Aims to Speed Up Diabetes Research

Dave Johnson says his immediate reaction to his daughter’s diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes at age 4 was typical of any father’s.
“It was my baby girl, and my response was I’m going to fix it or pay someone to fix it,” said Mr. Johnson, president and chief executive of the hotel management company Aimbridge Hospitality. “I dove in, spoke to some smart people. But then, I was hit between the eyes that there wasn’t a lot that I was going to be able to do.”
That was 22 years ago, and what he did do was volunteer with gusto, organizing fund-raisers in the Dallas area where he lived and working his way up to membership on the executive committee of the international board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the main nonprofit group making grants and evaluating research on the disease.
But recently, Mr. Johnson did something that appealed to his business side: He and his wife gave $1 million to a new nonprofit organization, the foundation’s T1D Fund, which invests in companies doing research into Type 1 diabetes. Any financial returns are used to make more investments.
“The fund is extremely transparent and crystal clear in its mission,” Mr. Johnson said. “We have a quarterly call and get updates when we’re making investments. It’s run similar to a for-profit.”
Structured like a private equity fund, the T1D Fund has a minimum donation of $500,000. The fund, which received $32 million in seed funding from the foundation, has a goal of reaching $80 million. It already has $55 million.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that attacks the panc Continue reading

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Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk to invest £115m in a new UK drug research centre in post-Brexit 'vote of confidence'

Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk is to invest about £115m over 10 years in a new research centre in Oxford, in a move described by the government as a “vote of confidence” in post-Brexit Britain.
About 100 scientists will work at the centre, investigating new approaches to treating type-2 diabetes.
David Gauke, chief secretary to the Treasury, said that the move was a “vote of confidence in the UK’s position as a world leader in science and research,” according to the BBC.
Novo Nordisk’s executive vice-president and chief science officer Mads Thomsen said Britain’s vote to leave the EU was “unfortunate” but should not affect the collaboration between Oxford and the company.
“Obviously we think the Brexit decision was unfortunate. That being said, Oxford University has been around for 800 years so the academic excellence and our company's ability to turn that into medicines hasn't really changed,” Mr Thomsen told the BBC.
John Bell, a medicine professor at Oxford, said the new set-up, which will allow for daily interactions between academic and industrial scientists, underlined the importance of sharing research and cutting-edge science across sectors.
The UK’s decision to leave the EU has raised concerns in the science sector over a potential gap in funding and sparked concerns amongst drugmakers over future regulation.
The European Medicines Agency, a body based in London and responsible for the scientific evaluation and safety monitoring of medicines, warned it is likely to leave after Brexit.
Mr Thomsen told the BBC: “We are very happy Continue reading

Experts Weigh In On Ketogenic Diet for Diabetes Type 2

Ketogenic diet has taken us by the wind in the recent years. There are numerous resources available online for people who are considering going on one.
A ketogenic diet, in very simple terms, is a very low-carb diet. It has been claimed that going on a ketogenic diet is beneficial for people seeking to lose weight and to improve their health. This probably sounds very charming to a person with diabetes who is looking to lose excess weight and to improve their overall general health to avoid or prevent any diabetes related complications.
But, is it really worth all the hype it has generated?
For someone who has diabetes, a healthy and nutritional lifestyle is extremely important. Though lowering the consumption of carbs from your diet can aid you, is it actually recommended to restrict yourself to a very low carb diet if you have diabetes?
We can’t claim to know but we reached out to respected experts who have shared their thoughts on the diet and whether they recommend it to their patients.
Read on to find out whether or not you could benefit from going on a Ketogenic diet.
1. Gina Keatley, CDN
I would not recommend the ketogenic diet to any patients other than those suffering with epilepsy. The proper ratio of fat to protein to carbohydrate calories (80-15-5) is extremely difficult to maintain over any period of time. In many research studies over half of the participants drop out of studies before they have completed due to this difficulty and in other studies the researchers do not get institutional approval for such a strict limit of carbohydrates and use one with far Continue reading

Metformin: Can a Diabetes Drug Help Prevent Cancer?

In 1957, the first results from a clinical trial of the diabetes drug metformin in patients were published. Yet, it would take nearly 40 years for the drug to be approved in the United States as a treatment for type 2 diabetes.
Now researchers want to know whether this decades-old drug may have additional uses in another disease—cancer. Based on findings from a number of large epidemiologic studies and extensive laboratory research, metformin is being tested in clinical trials not only as a treatment for cancer, but as a way to prevent it in people at increased risk, including cancer survivors who have a higher risk of a second primary cancer.
Numerous early-stage clinical trials are currently under way to investigate metformin’s potential to prevent an array of cancers, including colorectal, prostate, endometrial, and breast cancer. Several of these trials are being funded by NCI’s Consortia for Early Phase Prevention Trials. And NCI is collaborating with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to study participants from the landmark clinical trial, the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), to investigate metformin’s impact on cancer incidence.
Some of the early-phase prevention trials of metformin are enrolling participants who are at increased risk for cancer and who are obese, have elevated glucose or insulin levels, or have other conditions that put them at risk for diabetes.
“With the obesity epidemic, these studies are applicable to a substantial portion of the U.S. population and, increasingly, of the world population,” Continue reading

Diabetes Drug That Also Treats Obesity Could Make Billions

Being fat sucks. I’m not judging; I’ve been overweight all my life. Obesity puts you at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even some cancers.
Then of course there’s Type 2 diabetes. The mother of all obesity-related complications keeps your body from regulating the sugar it needs as fuel, and can lead to all kinds of health issues, like kidney damage, heart disease, and even limb amputation.
That could change, if pharmaceutical companies can convince doctors that a new-ish class of drugs can attack Type II diabetes and the fatness that begets it—without killing patients. Earlier this month, at the Endocrine Society’s annual conference in Boston, Danish pharma Novo Nordisk presented three years of data showing that their diabetes drug liraglutide helped obese and prediabetic patients lose weight without undue risk. Which is big, for a drug that’s been flagged for causing cancer.
In rats, that is. Liraglutide—or Saxenda, as it’s known commercially for weight-loss—carries a black box warning from the FDA for giving thyroid tumors to rodents. However, the specific tumor-causing cell biology is different enough in rats that many endocrinologists don’t consider it a significant risk to human patients.
Many, but not all. Weight loss drugs are historically pretty risky. Remember Fen-Phen? It was great at helping people get skinny—as long as those people were OK with developing chronic heart problems. Fen-Phen was pulled from the market in 1997, and its maker had to pay billions of dollars in legal fees.
Liraglutide, in Saxenda form, might Continue reading