A ray of blue light might help deliver a powerful new treatment for diabetes, British researchers say.
Dr David Hodson and colleagues at Imperial College, London, UK, created a form of sulfonylurea drug that changes shape when exposed to blue light. Sulfonylureas are a type of anti-diabetic drug that act by increasing insulin release from beta cells in the pancreas.
The drug, JB253, is still in development but has been shown in lab tests to only stimulate insulin release when exposed to blue light. This means that it would normally be inactive, but the patient could switch it on using blue LEDs stuck to the skin, and off by turning the light off.
Controlling when the drug increases insulin release means an excess of insulin can be avoided, preventing side-effects on other organs such as the brain and heart, and hypoglycaemia.
Details appeared yesterday (14 October) in the journal Nature Communications.
"Only a small amount of light would need to penetrate the skin to change the drug’s shape and turn it on," said Dr Hodson. "So far, we’ve created a molecule that has the desired effect on human pancreatic cells in the lab. There’s a long way to go before a therapy is available to patients, but this remains our ultimate goal."
Co-author Professor Dirk Trauner of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, added: "Photoswitchable drugs and photopharmacology could be enormously useful for all sorts of diseases, by allowing remote control over specific body processes with light."
Commenting on the development, Dr Richard Elliott of Diabetes UK said: "Work on light-activated medications is a fascinating area of study that, with further research, could help to produce a safer, more tightly-controllable version of this important therapy."
Broichhagen, J. et al. Optical control of insulin release using a photoswitchable sulfonylurea. Nature Communications 14 October 2014; doi: 10.1038/ncomms6116
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