Skip to content

Text Size: AAA

PRODUCTS

First-in-Class Diabetes Therapies

In March and April 2005—after 18 years of research and development—Amylin successfully launched two first-in-class medicines for the treatment of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. SYMLIN® (pramlintide acetate) injection is the first and only FDA-approved amylin agonist. It addresses unmet needs of insulin therapy by improving blood glucose control while increasing satiety, which can lead to reduced caloric intake and potential weight loss for people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes who use mealtime insulin. The SymlinPen® (pramlintide acetate) pen-injector was launched in January 2008, and since its launch more than 130,000 patients have been treated with SYMLIN.

BYETTA® (exenatide) injection is the first and only FDA-approved GLP-1 receptor agonist. It addresses significant unmet medical needs in type 2 diabetes by providing powerful, sustained A1C reductions with potential weight loss. Since its launch more than one million patients have been treated with BYETTA.*

About Diabetes

Diabetes is the fastest growing disease in America, with a new diagnosis every 21 seconds—about 1.5 million new cases annually. More than 23 million Americans are now living with this dangerous disease and, if current trends continue, one in every three U.S. children born in this century will develop diabetes.

The fifth deadliest disease in the United States, diabetes contributes to other serious and potentially life-threatening conditions, including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, visual impairment, nerve damage, and amputation.

Despite this, significant unmet medical needs in the treatment of type 2 diabetes still exist. 8,000,000 American patients with type 2 diabetes have not met the American Diabetes Association A1C treatment target,1,2 and 13,000,000 are overweight.1,3

References

1 American Diabetes Association. Economic costs of diabetes in the U.S. in 2007. Diabetes Care. 2008;31(3):596-615.

2 Resnick HE, Foster GL, Bardsley J, et al. Achievement of American Diabetes Association clinical practice recommendations among U.S. adults with diabetes, 1999-2002: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Diabetes Care. 2006;29(3):531-537.

3 Bays HE, Chapman RH, Grandy S; for the SHIELD Investigators' Group. The relationship of body mass index to diabetes mellitus, hypertension and dyslipidaemia: comparison of data from two national surveys. Int J Clin Pract. 2007;61(5):737-747.

* SDI data, March 2009.