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Branford Biotech Battles Diabetes
IDD earns FDA approval for human trials for new compound
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Business New Haven
12/13/1999
By: Michael C. Bingham
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A new drug created by a Branford biotech firm has the potential to prevent a devastating nerve disease common to the 16 million Americans who suffer from diabetes.
The Institute for Diabetes Discovery (IDD), a private drug-discovery firm, is moving ahead with its new diabetes drug after the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently accepted the company's formal application to begin testing in humans.
IDD's target is a disorder known as peripheral diabetic neuropathy, which affects the body's nerves controlling sensation and movement. Early symptoms include pain, tingling or loss of feeling in the feet. In advanced forms it can lead to foot and leg ulcers and is a leading cause of non-traumatic lower limb amputations.
The company's new drug, temporarily known as IDD 676, falls into a diabetes drug class known as aldose reductase inhibitors (ARIs). These compounds block a sugar called sorbitol from forming to excess in diabetes patients. In high concentrations within nerve cells, sorbitol can seriously damage the peripheral nervous system.
The IDD drug is the latest - and perhaps the most potent - of this new class of diabetes drugs designed to slow and perhaps halt the progression of peripheral neuropathy, if caught in time.
"Our safety and efficacy testing shows this drug to be a promising, potent and effective treatment for neuropathy," says IDD President and CEO James M. Nolan. "We expect this new drug will be the first of several regulatory approvals for a series of diabetes drugs we are currently working on."
IDD scientists express hope their drug may also be helpful in the treatment of other serious diabetic complications such retinopathy, which causes blindness, and nephropathy, which can result in kidney failure. These diabetes complications are thought to be caused by long-term high blood sugar levels stemming from the body's inability o correctly regulate glucose in the blood.
"The approval by the FDA for clinical trials if IDD 676 brings new hope to the more than 130 million people with diabetes worldwide," says Paul Zimmet, who chairs the IDD scientific advisory board and is director and CEO of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
The American Diabetes Association says that some 15.7 million Americans - 5.9 percent of the population - suffer from diabetes. About 800,000 U.S. residents will be diagnosed with the disease this year.
Founded four years ago, IDD is the flagship of the Institutes for Pharmaceutical Discovery (IPD), described by the company as "a vision for small private drug-discovery companies, each with their own disease targets, research staff and pharmaceutical partners."
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