Max Planck Institute, GSK to Collaborate on Diabetes Drugs

(National Institutes of Health)

The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPI) in Martinsried, Germany and the German subsidiary of pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have agreed on a partnership to develop new drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Max Planck Innovation, MPI’s technology transfer organisation, says the agreement is worth several million euros and covers a three-year period.

The joint research and development work is based on the research of MPI’s director Axel Ullrich, who with colleague Mathias Bäcker successfully described the role of certain protein molecules — known as kinases — in the development of type 2 diabetes. In the project with GSK, the scientists will look for new substances that can inhibit and control this kinase activity.

In type 2 diabetes, either the body does not produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin. Insulin is necessary for the body to be able to use glucose for energy. When you eat food, the body breaks down all of the sugars and starches into glucose, which is the basic fuel for the cells in the body. Insulin takes the sugar from the blood into the cells. When glucose builds up in the blood instead of going into cells, it can lead to complications.

In earlier work on diabetes, while at University of California, Ullrich developed a method of transfering a copy of the human insulin gene into bacteria, which helped make posible the industrial manufacture of human insulin for the very first time. Manufactured insulin has since made it easier for millions of diabetics to live with the disease, as they no longer have to depend on animal insulin, which is not nearly as well tolerated by the human body.