Cubans developing therapy for diabetic ulcers

Cubans' work 'very clever'
And, indeed, more studies do need to be done, said Dr. Kelman Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, Va., who last year attended an international symposium in Havana to discuss breakthroughs in wound healing research. It was at the meeting where Cohen learned about the experimental treatment that Berlanga and his team of scientists are using.

Cohen explained that these growth factors are on the market elsewhere and that they are also experimenting with them in India, but that it is how the Cubans are applying them — "in a very novel way" — is where they are making breakthroughs.

“What the Cubans have now done is very clever,” Cohen explained. “Rather than just dumping it into the wound, they’ve injected it into the healthy margins of the wound, thereby allowing it to kick-start the wound healing before it’s destroyed.”

However, while Cohen noted that the Cubans research has so far been very “promising,” he says they need to do some more rigorous research.

“My feeling is that the Cubans, and they know this, need to do carefully controlled double-blind studies, and they are trying to do that,” said Cohen.

But, said Cohen, the political situation between the United States and Cuba is an unfortunate impediment.

“Cuba has some very advanced ideas and we’re not taking advantage of them.” 

Global problem
Other countries, however, are. Lopez says he expects to be selling the drug abroad, especially in the developing world where diabetes rates are growing and amputation is frequent. At the same time, Cuban biotech managers reportedly are in talks with a European pharmaceutical company interested in partnering to conduct clinical trials.

There certainly would seem to be a market — diabetes has become a growing global epidemic, expected to affect 333 million people globally by the year 2025, according to the World Health Organization.

In the U.S., approximately 800,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Now the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S., diabetes affect almost 21 million Americans. The CDC has also warned that one-third of all children born in the U.S. in 2000 will develop diabetes — some 45 million people by 2050.

According to the CDC, the amputation rate for diabetics is 10 times higher than for non-sufferers. Every year, some 90,000 American diabetics undergo amputations.

Globally, the International Diabetes Foundation found that life expectancy after amputation is diminished and surgery can cost up to $65,000 in the developing world. Citroprot-P costs considerably less, with a full cycle of treatment costing between $18,000 and $28,000 and lasting five to eight weeks.

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