Oral Insulin Substitute Could Replace Injections

Erik Helmerhorst, professor at Curtin University, and colleagues, looked at three million compounds on pharmaceutical databases over 10 years to try to emulate the molecular map of insulin. They found one, and are developing it to “take the needle out of diabetes.” “Our innovation is the development of a new chemical entity, a small drug molecule we have discovered and developed, that can be taken orally as a tablet to replace insulin per se,” said Helmerhorst. Presented at the Univation 2011 conference in Perth, Australia, Nov. 2011