[friedegg]

As a type 1 diabetic, I feel this. It sure seems like there's a lot more money to be made from me selling insulin, testing supplies, pumps, etc, that I'll need to use for life (29 years and counting) than in finding a cure, which perhaps they can sell me once, or maybe yearly. I know there are people working hard to find a cure, but I also know that they struggle with getting funding.

[read_if_gay_]

Same situation, same feeling. I also don’t have high hopes for disruption from some startup, people seem to underestimate how much harder startups in biotech are compared to tech.

[golemarms]

isn't biotech a kind of "tech"?

[qsort]

As they say, technically correct is the best kind of correct but also the most useless.

Parent's point is well received: it's much harder to be a startup when you need to fund laboratories, complex supply pipelines, diverse and deep know-how, interaction with government agencies etc.

It's not like you have AWS for medical doctors.

[golemarms]

Agree with your points. However, parent commenter could have specified they were referring to software tech, not technology in general.

[swiley]

From the little I've read manufacturing insulin and testing supplies doesn't seem terribly complex. I'm not too sure why there's so much profit to be made other than regulatory capture.

[sudosysgen]

There is empirically a lot to be made in the US when you compare the price it's sold at and the cost of production.

[syrrim]

Different formulations of insulin offer different benefits to diabetics. Ones that are more slow acting more closely resemble the body's natural regulation of insulin, and therefore do less harm to the body. Or so I hear.

[friedegg]

Most type 1 diabetics take 2 types of insulin (except for people on pumps). One is your bolus insulin, which is faster acting, usually used before meals or to bring down high blood sugar more quickly. The other is your basal insulin, which is slower acting, typically taken once or twice a day, which provides insulin for your body's background metabolic processes. People on pumps typically just use the bolus type insulin, since the pump can continuously supply small doses every few minutes, which allows for finer tuning more quickly.

Until about 25 years ago, the normal bolus insulin was Regular insulin, which is just like what your body makes. However, injecting it into fat makes it work more slowly, so you'd take it a half hour before eating, and it would peak a couple hours later. Currently bolus insulins are a genetically tweaked version that allows the body to absorb it more quickly, within a few minutes, with a peak in an hour or so. In the human body, there's an even faster phase 1 insulin response, but to get it as a type 1, you'd need to inject insulin into a vein. It can be done, but it is considered extremely dangerous.

Basal insulins are generally regular insulin mixed with something to delay action or modified to do the same. Older ones like NPH needed to be taken roughly every 12 hours, but had a relatively high peak, which sometimes meant you needed to time a snack to deal with that. Newer ones offer a much flatter action curve, and can often be taken just once a day.

[shirakawasuna]

Monopolization and patent evergreening. Monopolization is a natural tendency of markets, you should expect it often.

[Decker87]

Same with Kidney failure when dialysis is 1% of the federal budget.