News Life Sciences Metabolic Solutions showing promise in fight against diabetes
Metabolic Solutions showing promise in fight against diabetes
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Jerry Colca and Rolf Kletzien are optimistic their diabetes drug in development could drastically change the treatment of the disease. PHOTOS: NATHAN PECK |
By Nathan Peck | LabWork
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KALAMAZOO — As the bad news about diabetes drug Avandia piles up, Kalamazoo-based Metabolic Solutions Development Company is seeing a bright future.
Research shows Metabolic’s clinical candidate promotes the development of stem cells into brown fat, a key process in managing individuals’ weight and their predisposition for developing diabetes. The research into the compound, MSDC-0160, found it promotes brown fat development in tissue cultures and mice, creating a stir among diabetes researchers.
Jerry Colca, president and chief scientific officer of Metabolic, explained that part of the reason brown fat is key to a person developing diabetes is that it is packed with mitochondria, the power plants of cells. Colca recently presented the results to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
The promising results come as the Food and Drug Administration imposes tight restrictions on the drug Avandia after some studies have indicated that it increases a patient’s risk of heart attack. Avandia was once a $5 billion winner for GlaxoSmithKline, but sentiment on the drug has soured recently after one study estimated that more than 47,000 people taking Avandia unnecessarily suffered a heart attack, stroke or heart failure or died from 1999 to 2009.
The problem with Avandia and Actos, Colca and Rolf Kletzien (COO of Metabolic Solutions) theorize, is that they are relatively blunt instruments, working on the nucleus of the cell to reduce patients’ blood sugar, but causing weight gain, fluid retention, and elevated blood pressure. The FDA has stated that patients in the United States will be allowed access to Avandia if they have tried every other diabetes medicine and the patients and doctors attest that patients have been made aware of the drug’s cardiac risks.
Metabolic’s drug takes a different approach, targeting the power plants of the cells, the mitochondria. The drug has been shown to positively impact glucose levels, as well as lipid levels, while avoiding the adverse side effects of other drugs on the market. The compound under scrutiny has been shown to direct the body to turn more stem cells into brown fat than white adipose cells. The finding was somewhat unexpected — a toxicologist from Mattawan-based contract research organization MPI called the duo with the news that the mice in the study had significantly larger deposits of brown fat.
“Our clinical candidates promote the proliferation of brown fat tissue from stem cells through cellular differentiation,” Kletzien told LabWork.
A quick primer on brown fat: Scientific studies show that the amount of brown adipose tissue (commonly known as “brown fat”) in the human body is an important factor in determining if calories are burned as energy or stored as fat. That cousin of yours who can eat her weight in chicken wings and not gain an ounce — odds are she has a high level of brown fat. High levels of brown fat are what allows Siberian huskies to sleep in snow and not freeze or shiver as brown fat allows the body to burn fat for heat. Brown fat’s existence in animals and in infants was well documented, but it had long been thought that it disappeared as humans reached adulthood.
“Brown fat, it turns out, is loaded with mitochondria,” Kletzien explained. “Biologists knew it was important in hibernation in animals, but it was never appreciated in man.”
Colca and Kletzien envision their compound being given to patients with a predisposition toward diabetes as the compound has been found to protect cells in the pancreas from the damaging effects of glucose in the bloodstream. Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases of the developed world and as the world’s largest countries, China and India, industrialize, diabetes rates are rising. Colca said that for reasons still not understood, the onset of diabetes can come rapidly with Asians and people from the Indian subcontinent.
“You are considered diabetic when the pancreas dies off and it cannot regulate glucose levels,” Kletzien said. “In India and China, people can go from nothing to diabetic in years, rather than the 20 years or more it takes for people of European extraction.”
Metabolic has completed a Phase 2a clinical trial of MSDC-0160, demonstrating that it improves insulin sensitivity and lowers blood glucose levels in humans without the side effects of the current market-leading diabetes medicines. Phase 2b clinical trials will determine its efficacy against diabetes compared to Actos.
The firm has been making moves in the boardroom as well as at the lab bench. Steve Benoit will join Metabolic Solutions as CEO at the end of October, after leaving the International Food Protection Institute in Battle Creek in September.
