Mathematical model could lead to better treatment for diabetes
One promising new strategy to treat diabetes is to give patients insulin that circulates in their bloodstream, staying dormant until activated by rising blood sugar levels. However, no glucose-responsive insulins (GRIs) have been approved for human use, and the only candidate that entered the clinical trial stage was discontinued after it failed to show effectiveness in humans. MIT researchers have now developed a mathematical model that can predict the behavior of different kinds of GRIs in both humans and in rodents. They believe this model could be used to design GRIs that are more likely to be effective in humans, and to avoid drug designs less likely to succeed in costly clinical trials. “There are GRIs that will fail in humans but will show success in animals, and our models can predict this,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “In theory, for the animal system...