quotable quotes - February 2008

“Exenatide once-weekly has an extremely attractive profile and offers the best glycemic control of any diabetes drug ever. Period. It is uniquely positioned to help many people with diabetes take control of their disease.”
- John C. Lechleiter, President and soon-to-be Chief Executive Officer of Eli Lilly speaking about exenatide once-weekly at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference on January 8. Exenatide once-weekly is a once per week injection being developed for people with type 2 diabetes – it is a “next generation” version of Byetta and we would expect it to become available to patients in ~2010. If you are interested in the testing of it, please ask your doctor as multiple clinical trials will begin in 2008.

“This (diabetes) epidemic will be in the 21st century what HIV/AIDS was in the 20th century. Some say that everything is fine today, but this is an illusion."
- Dr. Pierre Lefebvre, Immediate Past President of the International Diabetes Federation, speaking at the Global Diabetes Summit in Columbus, Ohio, in November, 2006. (See this issue's Conference Pearls for what we found to be very interesting learnings from this meeting.)

“…Moreover, blood sugar levels vacillate wildly because of stress, anxiety, or mood changes. They fluctuate when your mother-in-law visits or when the Red Sox are playing the Yankees, when you’re on a job interview or a date or a bumpy plane ride, when your favorite department store has a huge sale or when you’re drawing to an inside straight. In other words, life changes your blood sugar.”
— James S. Hirsch, in Logbook for diaTribe issue #7 titled “In Search of Reimbursement: A CGM Odyssey,”

“We’re very excited about Actos + DPP-4 inhibition, and that’s our advantage compared to Januvia.”
- Yasuchika Hasegawa, president of Takeda, discussing the company’s plans to bring a fixed-dose TZD (Actos)/DPP-4 inhibitor (alogliptin) combination pill to market. Alogliptin, which Takeda has recently submitted for FDA approval, belongs to the same drug class as Merck's Januvia.

“This therapy is NOT smoke and mirrors! It can and will work as we learn how to best use it.”
- Dr. Irl Hirsch, speaking at the Global Diabetes Summit about the bright future of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Dr. Hirsch predicts that CGM will become the “standard of care” for the treatment of type 1 diabetes within the next 5-10 years.