Posted by Al Gordon on January 05, 1999 at 20:30:57:
In Reply to: WSJ article posted by Steve van Leeuwen on January 04, 1999 at 11:35:53:
Steve,
I cannot find the reference to applying ARIAD technology to the regulation of insulin secretion in the article by Dr. James Wilson. Maybe I have been staring right at it, but could you please direct me to it?
The problem with insulin is that it needs to be regulated much more accurately that other proteins. Therefore, people with diabetes would take a quantity of the "rheostat" drug orally to cause the engineered cells in their bodies to produce a specific amount of insulin. The only difference would be that the insulin dosage would be proportional to the amount of "rheostat" drug swallowed, as opposed to the amount of insulin injected. The problems of over- and under-dosing would remain.
Assuming the drug was fast enough, its potential benefit may be to finally provide an oral treatment for type one diabetes. However, I expect that no oral agent could ever be as reproducible (both in effect and speed of action) as injections.
The technology sounds like it has significant potential, as it allows engineered cells to be implanted to produce essential large-molecule proteins that cannot be taken orally. The oral agent would then turn up and down the expression of the actual large-molecule protein. Very clever, if it works.
Al