Testing of artificial pancreas on patients likely to begin this year

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — An experimental artificial pancreas will soon be tested in diabetes patients, potentially sparing them the hormonal disorder’s most dangerous complications and frequent blood sugar checks and insulin injections.

If all goes well, a commercial model could be on the market in four years, said Aaron Kowalski, research director of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s artificial- pancreas project.

The device, being developed by the foundation and health-care giant Johnson & Johnson, potentially could help about 6 million diabetics in the U.S. alone who use insulin, Kowalski said.

It could prevent the life- threatening seizures that can occur when blood sugar drops too low, as well as blindness, amputations and organ damage caused by years of too-high blood sugar. And it would end having to track carbohydrate intake and then calculate the insulin doses needed all day long. That’s because the device would constantly measure blood sugar, and its computer would decide when to give the patient more insulin.

The research partnership, which also includes glucose- monitor maker DexCom Inc., was announced Wednesday.

The foundation has been working with researchers at major universities in recent years testing the components of what will be the artificial pancreas — various types of insulin pumps, continuous blood-glucose monitors and software — in various combinations to see what works best, Kowalski said in an interview Tuesday.

Johnson & Johnson’s Animas Corp. unit, which sells the OneTouch Ping insulin pump, and DexCom will use data from that research to produce a commercial model. A device about the size of a cell phone would be worn outside the body, linked to a tube of about three-eighths of an inch under the skin to hold insulin for release as needed. The first patient testing could begin in less than a year, Kowalski said.

“Four years is probably doable,” given the project’s “running start” and J&J’s skill and experience in developing new products and working with regulators, said Erik Gordon, a professor and analyst at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “It sounds promising.”

The experimental artificial pancreas would not cure diabetes, which has exploded along with obesity into an epidemic — dubbed diabesity — in the U.S. and other developed countries. But the device could enable patients to control diabetes much better, preventing complications that can lead to frequent hospitalizations and sometimes early death.

About 25 million people in the U.S. and millions more elsewhere have diabetes.