INSULIN IN A PILL IS A LIFE-CHANGER

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Dr Anubhav Pratap-Singh, Director, BC Food and Beverage Innovation Centre, has been recognized for introducing many technologies to Canada. His current project might well place him on the world map and earn him a place in the hearts of millions.

His team of researchers has developed an insulin pill to replace injections that diabetics have to take on a regular basis.

Encouraging animal trials bring the team closer receiving clearance from Health Canada and market authorization from FDA.

“We are in the process of planning human trials,” he says. “Our target is 2027 to make the pills widely available, and we’re looking at Europe, India and other countries as well. Normally, a drug can take years, even decades of research and testing to come on the market but fortunately, we have a shortcut route – our drug already exists. So we are treated as a new device. This is really a platform technology, one that can be used to deliver other peptides and hormones.

The insulin pills could be life-changing for diabetics in many ways.

The advantage of pills over the pain of daily injections, sometimes before each meal, is obvious.

There’s the cost benefit. The need for refrigeration during transportation and for storage of insulin injections increases the price, says Dr Pratap-Singh. They also need to be packaged with proprietary needles, again adding to the cost.

It’s easier to produce larger quantities of pills and they have a longer shelf life.

And then there’s the environmental cost.

Needles are not allowed in waste containers for safety reasons, he explains. They can contaminate other waste and require removal with metal detectors. Users collect and dispose them at a needles-accepting facility, where the plastic is separated from the metal manually. The plastic may not be recyclable and ends up in landfills and the metal creates a significant amount of waste, too.

WHO is unable to distribute insulin in many parts of the underdeveloped world due to the high cost and lack of refrigerated facilities.  People have to travel hundreds of kilometres to Red Cross centres to obtain the injections.

The big cost is that of the insulin itself, says Dr Pratap-Singh. It is currently produced by a handful of companies around the world and only five or six that produce insulin for human use are approved by the FDA.

With such a tightly-controlled production, one might expect push-back from Big Pharma. On the contrary, there has been interest from some large producers, he says. But they have not accepted funding from any as he is aware that blockage can be achieved in more than one way – Big Pharma can buy one off or take a majority share and then shelve the drug or technology.

Commenting on the irony that insulin, that was discovered by Canadian Sir Frederick Banting, is now mainly manufactured elsewhere, Dr Pratap-Singh speaks of what he calls innovation drain.

“We successfully develop bench-scale or lab-scale technologies, but don’t have the infrastructure or the investment to scale up. We have now started insulin production in Canada, but that is still in its nascent stages.

“Our real hope is that once approved, we are able to get on the WHO network to reach the poorest people. UBC has a Global Impact Policy where it works on a zero profit basis, and we hope to work with that to make an impact.”

The availability of insulin pills will help diabetics across the world, but has special significance for South Asians, who have been documented to have among the highest incidence of diabetes, coronary disease and metabolic conditions. 

Dispelling the belief that it is a “disease of the rich”, Dr Pratap-Singh says that recent numbers show that 70 per cent of the cases of diabetes are in the underdeveloped world.

“My father has Type 2 diabetes and I am prediabetic myself,” he says, sharing how he came to focus on this particular area.

He studied chemical engineering at IIT Kharagpur, and then did his PhD in food science at McGill. He then worked for a period at UofT’s chemical engineering department, developing iron-fortified salt in close collaboration with Banting and Best Institute.

His professor, Levente Diosady, had helped bring iodized salt to the market and the iron-fortified salt they developed helped cure nearly one million school children of anaemia in Tamil Nadu and bring down the percentage of anaemic people in Uttar Pradesh dramatically. 

When he received a job offer from UBC, his father said, “You have done so much good work on anaemia, do something about these injections I have to take every day”.

One of Dr Pratap-Singh’s first tasks for his PhD student Yigong Guo was to write a review paper on why insulin was not available to be distributed in tablet form yet.

As the Endowed Associate Professor in Food and Beverage Innovation, Faculty of Land & Food Systems, UBC, Dr Pratap-Singh helped establish the BC Food and Beverage Innovation Centre. It consists of 13 food hubs with pasteurizing, fermenting, freezing and other facilities that will be available to industries to help develop new products. It will be a place for start-ups to get incubated and they are trying to establish academic expertise in packaging at the Centre as well. 

He is also Principal Investigator, UBC Food Process Engineering Laboratory. Asked to provide an example of food process engineering, he says, “Indian cuisine is at the forefront of food processing!

“Indians were probably the first to use pressure cookers in their kitchens. Pasta extruders are all the rage here, but our grandmothers used chakli presses. Tadka – or seasoning food – by adding spices like cumin and mustard seeds to hot oil, that’s food processing! Now you see videos on cooking with water but it doesn’t taste nearly as good. Why? Because fat-soluble volatiles that are released during tadka are missing. Our grandmothers knew that. They preserved achaar.

“I tell my students that food processing is an ancient science. We were doing it before we had a name for it. We were boiling milk before Louis Pasteur explained the benefits of pasteurization. You can’t consume most agricultural products directly – other than fruits. Take paddy or potatoes, they ‘die’ after harvesting and have to be stored properly, or dried, processed, etc., to extend shelf life. Any operation to make agricultural food palatable is processing. It is ultra-processing that’s a problem.”

Food science is an integration of many sciences, he adds. Engineering, processing, etc., and also psychology and sociology.

Dr Pratap-Singh is academic member of the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, the UBC’s farm and agriculture unit. Here he works to find solutions to agricultural waste.

He has received many awards, but perhaps Banting Fellow he received in 2016 is the closest to his heart. “The first few are important and career defining. I was able to combine my knowledge of chemical engineering and food sciences, and that’s what makes my work different, the coming together of technology and the human aspect.”

Other awards include Young Entrepreneur Award and the Feeding Tomorrow Scholar Award he received for the new type of canning system he developed for his PhD fellowship.

He came to Canada in 2012 from Bangalore where he worked for a year as a software engineer. Concluding that it wasn’t for him, he and his wife (then girlfriend) Anika moved to Canada for their PhDs at McGill.

It was a complete culture shock, he says, because though McGill is English-speaking, it is in a French-speaking area and language was an issue on campus.

“We are also not from a rich background and had to watch our expenses in the three-plus years it took because the grants and funding we received just about covered rent for a one-bedroom apartment and put food on the table.”

He worked after classes and course work in a variety of jobs including at a tennis court in summer, as a library attendant, an exam invigilator, and, the most quintessential Canadian one of all, as a Zamboni driver on an ice rink!

“I put in 24-30 hours a week, but it was our choice, no complaints!” he says.

He finished six months before Anika and worked as a consultant for food companies, before landing the prized position at UofT.

Anika is now Dr Anika Singh, an adjunct professor at UBC, her main appointment is at the Centre for Applied Research and Innovation at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).

She is big on women’s rights and has 10,000 followers on Instagram, says her proud husband.

They have two daughters, Arya, 5, and Durga, 2.

“Arya must be the most-informed five-year-old where nutrition is concerned,” says Dr Pratap-Singh with a chuckle. “She knows how much sugar goes into chocolates. I’m vegetarian and she’ll try to get me to eat chicken for the protein.”

The recipe for success is the same everywhere, he believes. Hard work.

“In Canada, there’s the added advantage of respect for education and little to no bureaucracy. If you know your field, you will garner respect. My impression is also that we are viewed as a brainy and hard-working community, so that’s something to capitalize on.”

He has cautionary words, too. “Canadians are a law-abiding people and take something as simple as traffic regulations seriously.”

He warns international students against plagiarism. “That’s a serious offence, if they catch you, they will make an example of you. So work hard and work honest.”

His work, he believes, is about changing lives, and changing how industries operate.

There are over 100,000 children with Type -1 diabetes in the US alone, who need injections every day.

When news of his insulin pills broke, Dr Pratap-Singh was overwhelmed by the response from parents.

Many were willing to enrol their children in clinical trials.

“Can you imagine that?” he asks. “Parents would normally hesitate to give their kids anything that had not been tested and proven, but daily injections have such an impact on a child’s life. The need is dire, and that is my motivation to bring this to market quickly.

“Dr Diosady used to say he has probably saved the lives of more people than a doctor – that’s what I want my work to achieve. To make nutritious food and medications widely and safely available. That’s my goal.”       

• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).