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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowEli Lilly and Co. said Monday that it has submitted a new type 2 diabetes treatment it is developing with German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim to the Food and Drug Administration.
Lilly said the treatment, a once-daily tablet named empagliflozin, belongs to a class of drugs that aim to reduce blood sugar levels in patients by blocking glucose reabsorption in the kidney and removing excess glucose through urine. The drug does not depend on a patient's insulin levels to be effective, unlike other treatments.
Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes, a chronic disease in which a person's body doesn't properly produce or use the hormone insulin.
Lilly said in January that empagliflozin proved more effective than a placebo in initial results from several late-stage studies. The Indianapolis-based company will present more details on the studies at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting in June.
A Lilly spokeswoman declined to say when the FDA expects to make its decision on whether to approve the drug.
Lilly and Boehringer started teaming up in 2011 to design and sell several diabetes treatments.
Lilly shares fell 26 cents, to $55.31 each, in afternoon trading after hitting a 52-week high of $55.79 earlier in the session.
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