DreaMed Diabetes and Medtronic enter strategic collaboration

DreaMed Diabetes, developer of diabetes treatment and management solutions, announced today that it had signed an exclusive worldwide development and license agreement with Medtronic, the world's premier medical technology and services company, for the development and marketing of products incorporating DreaMed’s MD-Logic Artificial Pancreas algorithm in Medtronic’s insulin pumps.

Under the terms of the agreement, DreaMed Diabetes will receive undisclosed royalties from future sales of each device utilizing MD-Logic. Medtronic will be responsible for all development and marketing of such devices. In addition, Medtronic has made a minority investment in DreaMed Diabetes of $2 million.  

DreaMed Diabetes’s CE approved GlucoSitter™, which is based on the MD-Logic Artificial Pancreas algorithm, is a fully-automated, artificial-pancreas system for controlling glucose levels. The system links the glucose sensor with the insulin pump through computerized 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 that should be released to the body in order to maintain balanced blood glucose. In effect, the software continuously monitors glucose levels, and defines precisely when and how to adjust insulin levels.

This procedure minimizes the risk of hypoglycemia (low blood glucose) and hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) and therefore reduces the risk of both short and long term complications that are common among people with diabetes. The GlucoSitter closed-loop system improves the patient’s metabolic control, which can reduce the risk of short and long term complications of diabetes while reducing the burden associated with management of the disease.

The GlucoSitter has been tested in randomized, multi-center, multinational, controlled clinical trials in hospitals, diabetes camps and home settings on more than 220 patients, and counting more than 15,000 hours of day-and-night operational use. The results of these studies were published in leading medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine.[i]

Prof. Moshe Phillip, MD, Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of DreaMed Diabetes, and Director of the Institute for Endocrinology and Diabetes, Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, said:

We are very excited that only one year since inception, we have signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Medtronic, the world leading medical device company. This is an extremely gratifying validation of our technology and a major milestone for our Company.  We are certain that this partnership, which will incorporate our solution into Medtronic’s integrated insulin pump and glucose monitoring system, will improve the health as well as the quality of life of people living with diabetes

Alejandro Galindo, Vice President and General Manager of the Intensive Insulin Management business at Medtronic, added:

We believe that a fully automated artificial pancreas will provide greater freedom and better health for many people with diabetes by eliminating some of the burden of glucose management. Collaboration with DreaMed Diabetes and researchers worldwide will allow us to continue to advance more quickly toward a commercially available closed loop system

Eran Atlas, CEO of DreaMed Diabetes, commented:

GlucoSitter is our most advanced product. We believe future innovation in the diabetes market lies in advances in software products and sophisticated algorithms which will enable improvement in metabolic control and the quality of life for patients with diabetes

Source: DreaMed Diabetes / Medtronic