Professor Moshe Phillips, foreground, watches patients test the DreaMed
GlucoSitter.
Diabetes Aid
Israeli company's algorithm teams
with Medtronics' insulin pumps.
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60 April 30 • 2015
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David Shamah
Times
of Israel
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precisely when and how to adjust insulin
levels.
sraeli medical tech firm DreaMed
Diabetes has struck a deal with
Medtronic, the world's biggest
medical device company, to use its
MD-Logic Artificial Pancreas algorithm in
Medtronic's insulin pumps.
Under the terms of the agreement,
DreaMed Diabetes will receive undis-
closed royalties from future sales of each
device utilizing MD-Logic. In addition,
Medtronic has made a minority invest-
ment in DreaMed Diabetes of $2 million.
A distribution deal with a company
like Medtronic is about as big a deal as a
medical technology developer of any type
could hope to achieve. The company had
nearly $30 billion in revenue last year, a
market cap well over $100 million and
operates in more than 160 countries.
Working with a company like that
is extremely exciting, said Professor
Moshe Phillip, M.D., chairman and chief
scientific officer of DreaMed Diabetes.
Phillip is also director of the Institute
for Endocrinology and Diabetes at the
Schneider Medical Center for children
in Petah Tikvah, where the system was
developed.
DreamMed will retain ownership of
the algorithm, so as to be able to use it to
develop other products. The algorithm
is already in use in a device the company
itself has developed called the GlucoSitter,
a fully automated, artificial-pancreas sys-
tem for controlling glucose levels.
The system links the glucose sensor
with the insulin pump through computer-
ized control algorithms. It uses data of
glucose levels from a continuous glucose
sensor, analyzes them and directs the
insulin pump to deliver the correct dose
of insulin to be released for the body to
maintain balanced blood glucose.
In effect, the software continuously
monitors glucose levels, and defines
Artificial Pancreas
The deal falls right in with Medtronic's
long-standing efforts to develop an artifi-
cial pancreas. Over the past several years,
the company has come out with several
insulin pumps and continuous glucose
monitoring systems.
Diabetes necessitates constant vigilance
of nutrition and blood-glucose levels and
that patients inject insulin throughout the
day to compensate for the impaired func-
tion of the pancreas, which is supposed to
regulate insulin release.
Alejandro Galindo, vice president and
general manager of the Intensive Insulin
Management business at Medtronic,
said that "collaboration with DreaMed
Diabetes and researchers worldwide will
allow us to continue to advance more
quickly toward a commercially available
closed loop system."
The MD-Logic Artificial Pancreas
algorithm was developed at Schneider
Hospital in 2011. The system is comprised
of an off-the-shelf subcutaneous glucose
sensor that monitors the glucose level and
connects the sensor to an insulin pump,
both of which are connected to a com-
puter that controls the amount of insulin
to be released to the body to maintain
blood glucose balance. This innovation
"closes the loop' between the sensor and
the pump and relieves the patients with
diabetes from the daily burden of worry-
ing about how much insulin to inject.
Since it was developed, the technol-
ogy — which eventually morphed into the
GlucoSitter device — has been tested in
randomized, multicenter, multinational,
controlled clinical trials in hospitals, dia-
betes camps and home settings on more
than 220 patients, with more than 15,000
hours of day-and-night operational use.
The results of these studies were pub-
lished in medical journals, including the
New England Journal of Medicine.
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