Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

New diabetes drug to be tested for insulin production

CHENNAI: A new drug being used to treat type 2 diabetes is to be examined to see whether it can kick-start insulin production in patients whose diabetes has progressed so far that they need replacement shots. This is to develop the drug as a preventive treatment.

Januvia, says R. Ramachandran, president, India Diabetes Foundation, has stimulated insulin production in 50 of the more than 300 patients since he began prescribing the drug here three months ago.

The drug, developed by Merck, uses a different pathway to treat the disease, inducing beta cells to produce insulin using incretin hormones. It has the added advantage of preventing hypoglycaemia and can be taken at any time of the day.

But, Managing Director Naveen A Rao of MSD India, Merck’s wholly owned subsidiary, says the findings are yet to be confirmed through clinical trials. Merck, he clarifies, does have a pipeline for this development.

MSD, Dr. Rao says, has ‘hockey stick’ ambitions to shoot from 110th to 5th largest pharmaceutical company in India. The protocol for trials on its public-private partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research for a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer has been finalised. With trials due to start shortly, MSD hopes to see it launched within a year. The company is researching treatments for dyslipidemia and the Rotavirus infection which, Dr. Rao said, is part of Merck’s commitment to tackling diseases prevalent in India.

Merck’s share value, which plummeted after it was found that its pain-relief drug Vioxx caused heart attacks, has been boosted by the global sales of Januvia since 2006. Merck’s product is one of four new DPP4 inhibitors developed, but has profited by being first in class.

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