In the News.. Mark Cuban's pharmacy starts "insulin test," EOFlow patch pump, T2D drug updates & more!

It’s In the News, a look at the top stories from the diabetes community from the last seven days. This week: Cost Plus pharmacy starts putting out feelers about insulin, asking people to take part in a pilot program, EO Flow looks at the US market for their new patch pump, quite a few new studies about type 2 diabetes drugs, a study about slowing down type 1 in kids and much more!

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Hello and welcome to Diabetes Connections In the News! I’m Stacey Simms and these are the top diabetes stories and headlines of the past seven days.
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In the news is brought to you by The T1D Exchange - Help drive research that matters.
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Possible new player in the US Patch pump business. EO Flow has submitted a 510(k) application to the FDA for its EOPatch wearable, disposable insulin pump. EO Flow is based in California and has launched the pump in South Korea. The company also has FDA breakthrough device designation on an integrated artificial pancreas. The website says EOPancreas is a wearable disposable artificial pancreas system that integrates a continuous glucose sensor and an insulin pump in one small wearable module and autonomously controls insulin infusion. They’re looking for a US partner for the pump and hope to launch in 2024.

http://www.eoflow.com/eng/eopatch/eopatch_010100.html
https://www.drugdeliverybusiness.com/eoflow-submits-insulin-patch-pump-fda-clearance/
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Your time in range before getting a COVID vaccine may predict your body’s response. This was a small study, 25 patients with type 1 who received two doses of a COVID vaccine. Researchers followed the group two weeks before before and six months after the shots.
Main outcome measures: The primary exposure and outcome measures were pre-vaccination glucose control, and antibody response after vaccination, respectively. Patients meeting the recommended pre-vaccination glucose targets of TIR (≥70%) and TAR (≤25%), developed stronger neutralizing antibody titres (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.008, respectively), regardless of HbA1c. highlighting a role for well-controlled blood glucose in vaccination efficacy.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36611249/
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New study in kids with type 1 seems to show that the drug golimumab – brand name Simponi – can help preserve beta cell function. This is the Tiger study which included people ages 6 to 21 years old with T1D and given either the drug or a placebo for 52 weeks the off the drug for another year. The group taking the drug used less insulin and had a higher c peptide level in the time after the medication stopped, indicating that there was a difference.

https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article-abstract/doi/10.2337/dc22-0908/148228/Two-Year-Follow-up-From-the-T1GER-Study-Continued?redirectedFrom=fulltext
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New study confirming what a lot of you already know, Metformin failure in people with type 2 diabetes is very common, particularly among those with high A1c levels at the time of diagnosis.
An analysis of electronic health record data for more than 22,000 patients starting metformin at three US clinical sites found that over 40% experienced metformin failure. This was defined as either failure to achieve or maintain A1c less than 7% within 18 months or the use of additional glucose-lowering medications. "These results call into question the ubiquitous use of metformin as the first-line therapy and suggest a more individualized approach may be needed to optimize therapy," they add in their article published online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
The investigators identified a total of 22,047 metformin initiators from three clinical primary care sites: the University of Mississippi's Jackson centers, which serves a mostly African American population, the Mountain Park Health Center in Arizona, a seven-clinic federally qualified community health center in Phoenix that serves a mostly Latino population, and the Rochester Epidemiology Project, which includes the Mayo Clinic and serves a primarily White population.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/986994
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The FDA has approved a label update for semaglutide that allows the drug to be used in addition to diet and exercise as a first-line option to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. The brand name here is Wegovy. With its initial FDA approval in 2019, semaglutide became the first and only glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analog in pill form.
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/fda-approves-label-update-for-semaglutide-allowing-use-as-first-line-option-for-adults-with-type-2-diabetes
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Merk says it’s diabetes drugs Januvia and Janumet have become contaminated with a potential carcinogen.. and it can resolve the problem by the end of the year. The company submitted a report to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulators. The impurity arose mostly during storage, as well as during manufacturing, Bloomberg News said. The FDA said in August certain samples of sitagliptin, a compound in Merck's diabetes drugs Januvia and Janumet, were contaminated with a possible carcinogen.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-17/merck-mrk-ready-to-remove-cancer-linked-chemical-from-diabetes-drugs-in-2023
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Researchers studying new methods for improving blood sugar control in type 2 diabetes have discovered an old class of antipsychotic drugs may offer clues to a novel kind of treatment for hyperglycemia. While the researchers propose the old drugs could be directly repurposed to treat diabetes, they could also be slightly modified to more specifically target blood sugar control.
The class of drugs, known as (DPBPs), were developed back in the 1960s and are still used today. The researchers say they “They all improve blood sugar control by preventing the muscle from burning ketones as a fuel source.”
Because the DPBP drugs are already approved medicines the researchers hope to quickly move to proof-of-principal human trials. This would establish whether these preclinical findings are reproducible in human patients.

The new study was published in the journal Diabetes.
https://newatlas.com/medical/old-antipsychotic-drugs-new-class-diabetes-treatment/
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Another study showing an AID system works well for people with type 2. Scientists from University of Cambridge set up a small study, no surprise, the closed loop system did a lot better than standard injection therapy – people stayed in target range 66-percent of the time versus 32-percent with shots. That was an additional 8 hours a day of time in range.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/type-2-diabetes-artificial-pancreas-may-soon-be-an-option
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Dexcom gives us a little more information about the G7. I interviewed Kevin Sayer for this week’s long format interview and he says the G7 will launch in the US during this first quarter.. so by the end of March. He also gave a more pessimistic view for interoperability with Tandem and Omnipod than we’ve heard – with Tandem end of summer early fall and Omnipod 5 next year. It’s up to those companies, not Dexcom.
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T1D Exchange
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On the podcast next week.. how are those new year’s resolutions going? If you haven’t kept them up, maybe you tried to do too much at once? Nutritionist Ben Tzeel joins me to talk about how to get back on track.
I mentioned last week’s episode with Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer. We talk about the G7 launch and lots more, including their plans for the type 2 community and moving into “health”
That’s In the News for this week.. if you like it, please share it! Thanks for joining me! See you back here soon.