New technology compensates for body’s inability to produce insulin

A bionic pancreas, a device that uses next-generation technology to automatically deliver insulin, does a better job of maintaining normal blood glucose levels than standard-of-care management among people with type 1 diabetes.

Though it’s not the stuff of “The Six Million Dollar Man” television series, the new bionic pancreas may represent a breakthrough for people suffering from diabetes.

The device, an automated insulin delivery system, tracks a person's blood glucose levels using a continuous glucose monitor and it automatically delivers insulin when needed through an insulin pump. A 13-week study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found the system effectively replaces traditional approaches to controlling their blood sugar levels.

People with diabetes today must control their glucose levels by checking levels with a fingerstick and compensating with insulin injections, using a continuous glucose monitor with a separate insulin delivery system, or by using a manually controlled insulin pump.

The bionic pancreas requires less user input because its algorithms continually adjust insulin doses automatically based on a user’s needs. Users initialize the bionic pancreas by entering their body weight into the device's dosing software. That’s it. No counting carbohydrates. No periodic adjustments. The device takes over.

In a 13-week trial, the measure of glycated hemoglobin, the amount of glucose in the blood, improved from 7.9 percent to 7.3 percent in people fitted with the bionic pancreas. It was unchanged in the control group of patients, who continued to manage their blood sugar levels using standard-of-care methods.

The bionic pancreas group also spent 11% more time, about 2.5 hours each day, within the targeted blood glucose range, compared to the control group. Improvements in blood glucose control were greatest with participants who had higher blood glucose levels at the beginning of the study.

Surprisingly, the most notable improvement was with children.

"Youth showed statistically and clinically meaningful improvements in their time spent in target blood glucose range, even though there was no need to count carbohydrates, calculate basal insulin dosing or correct high glucose levels," said study co-author Jill Weissberg-Benchell, pediatric psychologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago in a press release. "This novel insulin delivery system likely decreases both the emotional and cognitive burden of diabetes management for both youth and parents living with type 1 diabetes." 

This technology offers the kind of promise we imagined when we developed the seven strategies that guide Methuselah Foundation investments, planning and policies. We believe in the power of technology to compensate for physical shortcomings or damaged organs. Ultimately, we look forward to a day when a faulty pancreas can be bio-printed and replaced. But we think the bionic pancreas is a perfectly acceptable intermediate advancement that promises to make it easier to live with type 1 diabetes.

It's another important step towards reaching our goal of making 90 the new 50 by 2030.