Diabetes: the latest developments in inhibitors, insulin sensitisers, new drug targets and novel approaches
Source: Cristina M Rondinone
Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., Metabolic Diseases, 340 Kingsland St., Nutley, NJ, 07110, USA.
The 6th annual conference on diabetes, organised by the SMI group, was held on 18th – 19th October 2004 in London, followed by a one-day symposium on an executive briefing entitled Type 2 diabetes and beyond: the untapped commercial potential. More than 100 delegates from both academic and industrial institutes attended the two meetings. The presentations provided insights into the understanding of mechanisms and developments of novel drugs for treatments of insulin resistance, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, as well as new approaches for therapeutic intervention including the development of dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide-1 analogues. This review offers a general overview of the fields in metabolic diseases and different strategies to develop new drugs. Discussions focused on several emerging therapeutic areas, including novel compound developments and target identification with the use of conventional methods and recently emerged technologies, such as siRNA, genomics and pro-teomics.