Roche and Amira to develop new tools for diabetics

Monitoring blood with such a meter is an essential part of daily life for diabetics. Roche

When the Roche healthcare group acquired the Amira Medical company in the United States last month, the news went almost unnoticed.

Compared with the announcement earlier this week that it had spent at least SFr2 billion ($1.21 billion) to take a majority stake in the Chugai Pharmaceutical company of Japan, the Amira deal is small.

However, despite only having a staff of 160, Amira, is set to help Roche develop new ways of helping diabetics control their daily lives.

Amira, based in Scotts Valley, California, develops and markets glucose monitoring products.

Injecting insulin

The monitoring of blood several times a day is absolutely essential for diabetics to know if their glucose sugar levels are balanced, or too high or too low.

Basically, if the level is too low, they have to eat something to raise the level. If it is too high, they have to lower the level, often by injecting insulin.

Diabetes is a chronic disease in which the body is unable to produce insulin or cannot properly use the insulin it produces. The disease is divided into two types. Type 1 generally occurs in young patients who have to inject, while Type 2 is associated with people who are overweight. The latter can often take oral medication.

Estimates published by World Health Organisation in Geneva predict that if the current trends continue, the number of persons with diabetes will more than double, from 140 million to 300 million, in the next 25 years.

Monitoring tools

Roche has itself been developing diabetes monitoring tools for the past 25 years and hopes that its acquisition of Amira will strengthen its position in diabetes care.

Glucose monitoring is much more sophisticated than it was 25 years ago but you still need to draw blood.

“Diabetics have to prick their fingers several times a day. This can hurt and at times they have trouble because not enough blood comes out to make the test,” Roche spokesman Daniel Piller told swissinfo.

“They have to put the blood on a strip and then put this into a little box which measures the glucose present in the blood,” he added.

Roche did not buy Amira for its size but because it has knowledge and patents in the area of integrated spot monitoring.

“We will work together with them on a solution in which diabetics will have all the tools they need in one,” Piller explained.

New technology

Amira has pioneered technology to enable users to draw a small blood sample from areas of the body other than the fingertips.

“We will first develop such systems with them and will work on technologies in which you don’t need blood to test your glucose level,” he said.

“The ultimate target is an automated pancreas which will be implanted in the body. This will measure the glucose level and add the additional insulin which is needed, so you don’t have to worry about your glucose levels any more,” he added.

However, for the foreseeable future, the current way of monitoring blood glucose levels several times a day will remain a fact of life for many people with diabetes.

Although it is difficult to give a global figure for the value of the market in diabetes care, Roche estimates that the integrated spot monitoring market segment alone will be worth some SFr5 billion a year by the end of the decade.

by Robert Brookes