Smartcells Smart Insulin will be aquired my Big Pharma Merck

Without insurance- in the U.S. expect to pay about $28-100 for a jar of insulin depending on what kind of insulin and where you get it. I remember a while ago that Walmart had it for $32 and Walgreens had the same kind for $65ish and they were right next door.

Humalog/Novolog and Lantus are pretty expensive in the US. Roughly $100 a vial. I have no insurance why? (diabetes) so I buy my Insulin from Canada and that same vial cost me about $33 if I buy a bulk of ten after shipping. F**** Y*** US! You can buy Humulin and R here in the US for roughy $25 to $30 a vial at Walmart. I don’t use a pump so I have no additional expense there and only test a few times a week at the most so diabetes at the moment doesn’t cost me too much. The fact is many diabetics either don’t have or can’t afford insurance so if and when Smart Insulin comes out if its way too expensive I’ll one way or another get it through medicare. If they don’t give it to me then I’ll just die that’s all. Again I’m hoping by the time Smart Insulin gets commercialized they will have figured out a real cure that is cost effective.

Zoe I don’t the Insulin stays in your body post 24hrs. From my understanding if say you injected 100 units to cover your daily needs and you only used 80 the other 20 would just be flushed out of your system. So in essence you would still have to pay attention in your carb intake to make sure you don’t run out of insulin. Also there are other factors other then just food that could end up using the insulin. I don’t think its going to be so cut and dry but if it works fast enough and reacts on demand during meal spikes to keep the levels in the normal range without causing hypos that in itself will be fabulous. I think in the end there will be lots of wasted insulin until you would get a hang of the dosing.

I hope Merk does the right thing. But you know some companies buy other companies to kill the competiton and to kill the research. It seems that Merck makes more money out of keeping people in pills than in comming up with solution to problems. Why would Merck want a product that could kill their cash cow which is pills. I hope they do the right thing but I just dont trust what Merck does.

So you believe they will make more money with pills then Smart Insulin? I highly doubt it and if any one of these research companies like Exsulin, CureDm or Dr Faustman get the breakthrough all these Pharma’s will be toast with their diabetes division anyway. Sanofi Aventis earlier in the year signed with Curedm for roughly $335 million for their pancreate which has great potential to reverse the disease and they sell Lantus. The bottom line is Diabetes treatment desperately needs an overhaul one way or another. Poking yourself multiple times a day and still running erratic sugars is no way to live. Personally I’d rather be sitting behind bars as a non diabetic!

Yes, i do believe they make more money by selling pills to type 2 people. I am picking on Merck only because I dont think they are an honest company. Maybe other companies may have the right intention but I think Merck has just become a Wall Street puppet.

We see that here in our own forums that the money goes to type 2 research mostly and to maximize profits for companies. We talk about how companies are pouring money into type 2 research and comming up with pills and no cures and you and I both know they make a killing in profits. So in the 15 years that I have been in computers I have seen the price of a computer go from 10,000 to 300 dollars but companies cant make a 10 cent test strip. You know they already make a lot of money on test strips because they can and Merck makes a lot of money on drugs because they can and makes Walls Street happy.

check this out

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/766143-overview

from that article

In 2005, people with diabetes were estimated to account for 7% of the US population, or approximately 20.8 million people.3 Of these 20.8 million people, 14.6 million have a diagnosis of diabetes, and diabetes is undiagnosed in another 6.2 million. Approximately 5-10% have type 1 diabetes, 90-95% have type 2 diabetes, and 1-5% have other types. Additionally, an estimated 54 million people have pre-diabetes.

That is a lot of januvia to be sold to those pre diabetics and type 2 diabetics. I guess they could be on smart insulin also but their issue is insulin resistance so they still would need some pills to deal with that.

I dont trust Merck to do the right thing because of past history

Orleans Metro Real Time News
Merck settles drug pricing lawsuit for $650 million

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/merck_settles_drug_pricing_law.html

You also remember Vioxx right, from Merck

(Reuters) - Merck & Co has agreed to make corporate governance changes and create internal committees to address potential safety issues with its products under a proposed settlement of shareholders lawsuits related to its withdrawn Vioxx painkiller.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61937E20100210

I am also biased against Merck for the garbage they made call Januvia. After it ruined my life.

Plus Jenny from the forumn here has done a lot of research on the wonder drug

http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-evidence-connects-januvia-to.html

So i think Merck is up to no good with what they have in their hands. I think they will ruin a good idea and product. I do hope they do something good with it but at this point to me their track record is not the best.

Well to be honest I have not followed Merck and their past. In regard to Smart Insulin my guess is it would be the same effective for type 2’s and chances are without the type 2 population Merck would likely have had no interest in it being the type 1 population is small in comparison. I am sure Dr Zion was aware of Mercks history before they finalized the deal and highly doubt he would have sold out to a company he felt would destroy or shelve his hard work. He’s been paid off big time but I am sure he’d love nothing more then to see his Insulin become reality. If you don’t already know he apparently has a cousin with Type 1 and I think a family member with type 2. FWIW their is another company out in Texas called Cense Bio-sciences that is working on a similar formulation called Briodurance so I think Smart Insulin will have competition even though they will likely be the first… Here is the link



http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0804/gallery.rice_b_plan_co…

Reeasoning behind the way I am thinking: (1) Merck paid 500 million, approx.; (2) Merck does not manufacture any fast acting insulin; (3) Merck will, essentially, corner the whole market, for Type 1s anyway. In other words, why would they sell out? If the insulin works as touted, and if it is offered at an affordable price, they may soon have a monopoly. Who is going to bother with Lantus, Levimir, Novolog or Humalog if it works?