Expanding Boston Therapeutics' Medical Advisory Board and Patentable Uses of BTI-320
In addition to the leadership additions announced last week by Boston Therapeutics (BTHE-OTC), the company today announced that is has also appointed David S.H. Bell, MB, FACP, FACE, to its Medical Advisory Board. This increases the number of members of the Board to eight.
David S.H. Bell, MB, FACP, FACE
Dr. Bell is an adjunct clinical professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine where from 1980 to 2005 he served as a professor of medicine. The author or coauthor of more than 320 publications, he is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He is a member of the American Diabetes Association and is on the Editorial Boards of the journal Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism and Endocrine Today. He is a graduate of Belfast Royal Academy and Queens University School of Medicine, from which he graduated with the MB, BCh, BAO degree.
Details of the rest of Boston Therapeutics' Medical Advisory Board can be found on the company's website or on pages 8-9 of our August 22, 2014, Quarterly Update published on Boston Therapeutics.
New Therapeutic Uses for BTI-320
Yesterday, the company announced that it had filed a patent application directed to novel therapeutic uses of its lead product candidate, BTI-320. BTI-320, a new generation of alpha glucosidase inhibitor, is a non-systemic chewable tablet designed to reduce post-meal elevation of blood glucose. BTI-320 is designed to be taken before meals and works in the gastrointestinal tract to block the action of carbohydrate-hydrolyzing enzymes that break down carbohydrates into glucose and release it into the bloodstream. It is poised to enter a Phase III study in 2015.
The patent application filed this week is directed to the recently discovered molecular mechanism of action of BTI-320 found during a preclinical study led by Dr. Kevin Mayo, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. The application captures novel methods of therapy in the area of diabetes that are based upon the molecular mechanism of action of BTI-320 in relation to a-amylase, a key enzyme responsible for the breakdown of starch in the human body. This recent filing further augments Boston Therapeutics' existing international patent portfolio that is directed to compositions and formulations related to BTI-320.
David Platt, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Boston Therapeutics, said, "Our recent findings related to how BTI-320 might function in vivo appear to support the potential viability of BTI-320 as an alternative to acarbose therapy for glycemic control and its potential for synergistic combination therapies with existing treatments."