Comment on Insulin

Zacryon@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• fullsquare@awful.systems ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  also european, but with some background: the problem is that there is natural (as in, unmodified) generic insulin available, it’s just that it sucks compared to everything else. you see, insulin is a peptide that is supposed to appear, do some signalling, then disappear and unmodified insulin copies this thing exactly. the problem is, most of the time, you don’t want to do that, you’d like insulin to last longer than usual, which means changes to it that make breakdown slower, or adding something that makes it stick to albumin, which has similar effect because it hides insulin somewhere enzymes can’t reach it. this means less frequent dosing and less changes in insulin activity over time. there are also other insulins that start acting faster than natural, and this is also due to a couple of modifications in its structure

  for another example, ozempic was not the first drug in its class, it’s also a modified peptide, and it can be injected s.c. once a week, compared to previous iteration (liraglutide) that requires daily injections. if natural peptide is injected i.m. instead, its halflife is half an hour, and in serum it’s only two minutes (it gets released a bit slower than it is metabolized)

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  • Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Oh wow, an actual nuanced response and genuine answer!

    Also today I learned!

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    • buttnugget@lemmy.world ⁨29⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Responses don’t need to be nuanced to be useful.

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  • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Costs aren’t just research and purification, it’s also good manufacturing practice and quality control.

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    • fullsquare@awful.systems ⁨43⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      i mean i don’t think about it as a separate budget line because if you don’t have that you get police raids and investigation instead of normal business, but yea. insulin is purified using HPLC, so at all times you get some of analytical data about fractions you just made, so some of QC, not all, but already something, already happens at this point

      my point is that actual manufacturing costs will be low because biotech scalability logic is that you need to make yeast or something that makes peptide you like and then all you need to do is keep bioreactor alive and happy. lots of what is left is in purification

      also it’s an injectable so it’s gonna be kept to some standards that non-injected drugs aren’t

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    thats why the big 3 companies make different version insulin so they are effective at certain times of the day, or when you eat/

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    • fullsquare@awful.systems ⁨51⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      there are multiple short-acting and long-acting insulins because you can’t patent other people’s things, but now it’s all off-patent. just take your stainless steel bioreactor and preparative HPLC, cook up a batch, wait ten years for biosimilar approval and you’re good to go

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• Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  That’s certainly how capitalism is marketed, isn’t it?

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• Soulg@ani.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Correct, but when it’s already been established that people will pay those prices, they keep them high. So instead of going from $800 to $5 out of the goodness of their hearts, they go from $800 to $650 (number made up) to get more business but still make massive profits.

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• Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You’d THINK capitalism would cause that to happen, wouldn’t you?

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  • Iceblade02@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    A lot of the benefits people associate with capitalism require a free market. The US problem is that the megacorps have gotten sufficiently powerful to abolish that free market through regularory (and legal) capture, enabling entrenched monopolies.

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  • Banana@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Doesn’t work when people don’t get to choose not to take it when it gets too expensive! That thing that capitalists always forget about: necessities.

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    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Every time someone talks about you being supposedly free to choose where to work they should get instant diarrhea. Let alone medicine of course, that’s a hard dependence.

      Nobody is truly free without proper UBI and free healthcare and good public transport. Only then true freedom can exist.

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      • Banana@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Amen!

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    • obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Capitalists don’t forget. They exploit.

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  • Kaput@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What USA is experiencing is feral Capitalism.

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    • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Crony capitalism

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      • Horse@lemmygrad.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        it’s just capitalism, that’s what capitalism is

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• hakase@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Yup, but their products don’t work as well, don’t work for everyone, or have other downsides. Banting’s original insulin would be dirt cheap today, but it’s shit compared to what we have now, so the best products on the market today charge a premium for either efficacy or convenience.

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