[ProjectInsulin]

I would like to point out that these fancy insulins have been around since 1996. I do agree that there is cheaper insulin available, but as others mentioned there is a significant change in quality. But I agree with you that the conversation should be affordable high quality insulin.

Another piece of the insulin ad drug saga that I haven't seen many people discuss here is the distribution of drugs. The distribution from manufacturers to patients is incredibly inefficent with a variety of middle organizations increasing the cost associated with distributing the insulin and those costs are pushed down onto patients. Our website has a simplified graph showing the current model vs what we plan on doing: https://projectinsulin.org/why-insulin/

For a more in-depth look the Wall Street Journal has a great video from 2019: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/news-explainers/how-drug-pr...

[basch]

I assume when you say 1996, you mean Humalog/insulin lispro? That falls in the rapid category, but I feel like most of the conversation about people wanting cheap modern insulin is the long acting right? The primary quality of life improvement people seek is having to inject only once a day, plus extra if diet requires?

I was dating 20 years from glargine (invented 1994, approved 2000), which is technically still patent protected somehow, despite biosimilars being approved. It takes a while too for Doctors to switch over when new paradigms are delivered. The real metric should be when long acting overtook intermediate acting prescriptions.

For anyone looking for history of modern insulin. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4045187/

[ProjectInsulin]

yes apologies glargine was approved in 2000. And I agree it does take a while for doctors to switch. Something interesting that I have recently learned is that it may even be hard to find clinical trial participants because doctors will be hesitant to take patients who have good reactions to their current insulin off of that insulin to be a part of a clinical trial.

I will also say that Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) also have a lot of power when it comes to influencing doctors to begin prescribing new drugs.