New Diabetes ‘CGKM’ Sensor Will Monitor Both Glucose and Ketones (featuring PercuSense)
Glucose monitoring has come a long way in helping to reduce dangerous low blood sugars, but we haven’t seen the same capabilities for detecting and preventing high blood sugars that can lead to deadly Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA).
A new type of technology in development could solve that problem, if it moves forward successfully in early research and clinical development and eventually makes it to the product stage in coming years.
Digital health startup PercuSense in Southern California — which has former Medtronic Diabetes engineering talent at its helm — is working on this next-generation tech for diabetes, a combined continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that also keeps tabs on ketones. It would be dubbed a CGKM, for short.
If successful, it would serve a critical function in helping to tackle DKA in hospitals, as well as for PWDs (people with diabetes) using a newer class of glucose-lowering drug known as SGLT2 inhibitors, which can sometimes lead to spikes in ketone levels.
PercuSense announced in early November 2020 that it received a $2.5 million grant from the prestigious Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, supporting research to develop this CGKM. A separate grant also builds on pre-clinical work by Dr. David O’Neal at the University of Melbourne in Australia, going toward animal and human clinical trials.
