The University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Sansum Diabetes Research Institute (Sansum) announced today the achievement of a milestone in the Artificial Pancreas Project funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).
The world's most flexible artificial pancreas system platform, currently being used in clinical trials around the globe, now has the benefit of compatibility with Animas Corporation insulin delivery products.
Animas Corporation (www.animas.com) is supplying its insulin delivery products to UCSB/Sansum and will be supplying them through the Animas Investigator-Sponsor Study (ISS) Program to other members of the Artificial Pancreas consortium, which comprises those teams participating in JDRF's Artificial Pancreas Project. The Artificial Pancreas System (APS) platform was developed in Santa Barbara by UCSB in collaboration with Sansum, and is being used by researchers around the world. The insulin delivery products provided by Animas seamlessly configure with UCSB/Sansum's APS.
"The APS platform enables researchers from around the world to focus on developing the core algorithms for the artificial pancreas without the burden that is associated with the integration of hardware, software and a human machine interface," commented Dr. Eyal Dassau, lead scientist for UCSB's Artificial Pancreas System. "The APS is the only system that allows fully automated closed-loop clinical trials and its design allows it to be expanded as new devices become available."
"Animas Corporation has been instrumental in supporting the addition of their pump to our artificial pancreas platform," commented Dr. Howard Zisser, Director of Clinical Research and Diabetes Technology at Sansum. "This milestone should improve the communication performance of the system while also expanding the number of possible research centers that can use it to help close the loop for automated insulin delivery for patients with type 1 diabetes. The extended communications range will also allow research subjects greater freedom during clinical trials."
"The significant progress that the researchers at UCSB have made with their artificial pancreas system is proving to be a critical component in allowing us to see a first-generation artificial pancreas commercially available in the near future," said Aaron Kowalski, Ph.D., Assistant Vice President of Glucose Control for JDRF and Director of the JDRF Artificial Pancreas Project. "Building on the announcement we made with Animas earlier in the year, we are all aware of the near-term impact on quality of life that even a partially automated artificial pancreas system can have for people with diabetes, and we are excited to see this development move forward."
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