Opportunity
Diabetes is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. The ability to clinically identify IR is essential to increasing the global market for insulin sensitizers, which in 2004 totaled more than $4 billion.

Insulin resistance
Diabetes is caused by loss of the ability of pancreatic cells to secrete insulin or by an inability of tissues to use insulin to maintain blood sugar levels. IR is a key measure of diabetes. Moreover, IR is the underlying factor for pre-diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, which defines the combined influence of pre-diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and cholesterol on cardiovascular health.

Drug screening and development with KineMed technology
KineMed technology has the unique capability of rapid, minimally invasive, real-time measurement of IR and pancreatic function in animals and patients. In addition, KineMed's technology can be used preclinically to identify drug that stimulate pancreatic beta-cell proliferation.

In KineMed's method, as in a standard glucose tolerance test, patients are simply given a small glucose drink before the measurement. To enable the measurement of IR, a fraction of the glucose in the drink is "deuterated" (incorporates a specific nontoxic deuterated hydrogen atom). Uptake of the deuterated glucose into the tissue is mediated by insulin, and the first (non-rate limiting) step of glycolysis releases a deuterated water molecule into the blood. A finger-prick sample is all that is needed to determine the level of deuterated water in the blood and thus degree of glucose utilization.

By measuring the patient's insulin level, we can simultaneously determine the patient's insulin resistance and level of pancreatic function. KineMed IR measurements show excellent correlation with the "gold standard" euglycemic clamp in human patients. KineMed is utilizing its IR measurement both patients and animals to identify and develop drugs that treat IR and stimulate pancreatic compensation.

KineMed's IR measurement has excellent clinical correlation with the hyperinsulemic euglycemic clamp, but is superior to the clamp in its ability to simultaneously measure pancreatic function by determining IR without the addition of exogenous insulin.

KineMed has also developed instrumentation to support high volume utilization of this method for clinical trials and patient screening