Novel Diabetes Drug To Be Filed In Latin America

Canadian company BiOTECH Holdings, based in Vancouver, British Columbia,says it plans to start filing for approval of its new diabetes drug DIAB II (V-411) in Latin America beginning next month. The product debuted in China, its first market, in January. The Latin American expansion marks the first wave of BiOTECH's development efforts for the drug outside China.

V-411 is an insulin sensitizer, but appears to differ in its activity from other drugs which act in this way, notably Sankyo's troglitazone (Marketletter October 6). Troglitazone is thought to exert its effects at a specific nuclear receptor (PPAR) which regulates the actions of genes in fat cells that are involved in the control of glucose and fat metabolism. V-411 is thought to work by increasing the affinity for insulin to receptors on skeletal muscle cells, increasing its internalization.

V-411 was developed for the Chinese market first because of the strong links between its discoverer, BiOTECH's Chinese-Canadian chief scientist Ping Sun, and the medical community back in China. The drug emerged as a by-product of a research program looking at ways to incorporate human chorionic gonadotrophin into topical formulations.