Pfizer drops Exubera insulin inhaler
You probably have seen the news on this from other blogs. The first I read about it today was on Scott Strumello's blog this morning.Exubera is the inhaled insulin that Pfizer has been has been working hard to get people with diabetes to use. And I've always believed this would be a hard sell. There's not enough information about the long term consequences of inhaling this very new drug. And the inhaler itself has been commonly referred to as a bong, almost from the day it was released. This is one case where getting a true design team in to think about making something acceptable for most users would have helped a lot.
Anyway, there's a lot of news out there about this cancellation and I wanted to point out some of them. The Wall Street Journal Health Blog has several interesting posts:
- Pfizer Gives Last Rites to Exubera
- Clouds Hang Over Inhaled Insulin After Exubera's Demise
- With Partners Like Pfizer, Nektar Needs Dummies
Despite what I thought about the delivery mechanism, I did like the idea of a novel form of diabetes treatment. We're treating diabetes in the same way that Banting and Best did in the 1920s. Insulin is now purer and our dosing is more accurate, but otherwise not much has changed (except for Symlin/Byetta).
I do hope that this doesn't discourage drug makers from looking at other ways to help us treat and manage our diabetes. It would be a terrible shame if this decision by Pfizer had that kind of an effect.
Labels: exubera, inhaler, insulin, pfizer
posted by Bernard @ 5:49 PM
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