Ajay Chaudhuri, MBBS, MRCP(UK), FACE
“Research of today is the future and treatment of tomorrow and has the potential of changing and improving lives for millions of patients living with a disease.”
As clinical scientists and researchers, we listen to our patients and then formulate hypotheses and design clinical trials to make their lives better. This is what excites me most about research and clinical trials.
For example, since I started treating patients with type 1 diabetes (almost 30 years ago) it was quite apparent that in spite of taking multiple injections of insulin and following strict lifestyle recommendations they still experienced wild fluctuations in their glucose levels. In 2014, in the UB endocrine division we started using GLP-1 agonists (medications like liraglutide and now semaglutide) approved for type 2 diabetes in subjects with type 1 diabetes, as we thought it could reduce the fluctuations in glucose in these patients. Following our initial observations in a small number of our clinic patients, we conducted prospective trials demonstrating their benefits in subjects with type 1 diabetes and even showed that when used early (just after diagnosis of type 1 diabetes), we could avoid the use of insulin for at least a year and in some cases more than 2 years in these patients.
This seminal observation by our division has now led to conduction of clinical trials by the manufacturers of these medications, so they can be approved by the FDA as an adjunct to insulin in the treatment of type 1 diabetes. It has been amazing to see how the quest to improve the lives of people with type 1 diabetes could be a potential treatment for these patients in just 10 years since our initial observation.
It is a great feeling when I see someone with type 1 diabetes on these medications when they say that for the first time in their life they feel they are in control or when I tell someone with type 1 diabetes who has been recently diagnosed, that it is possible that they could keep their glucose under control with a once weekly injection instead of four injections a day and see the relief on their faces. They are amazed to hear that this was something that began right here in Buffalo. This is what makes it all worthwhile and motivates me to be involved with clinical research.