A Calgary biotech company says it is a step closer to making insulin from safflower, a plant usually grown for its oil.

Its proprietary plant-based insulin "has been demonstrated in animal models to be chemically, structurally and functionally equivalent to U.S. pharma grade human insulin," SemBioSys Genetics Inc. said in a release Wednesday.

Usually grown for oil, engineered safflower plants could become insulin factories.

Based on tests in the labs and on mice, the insulin produced in safflower "is indistinguishable from human insulin analytically and physiologically."

That clears the way for the company to start the new drug approval process later this year, president and CEO Andrew Baum said.

A chart on the company website shows trials continuing into late 2009 and commercialization beginning the next year.

SemBioSys' technology "uses the natural ability of seeds to produce, extract and purify proteins in large quantities and at low cost," the website said.

Cost advantages

The company said its genetic engineering of oilbodies in safflower proteins will reduce the cost of producing insulin, used to treat some diabetics, while the need increases.

Demand for insulin is forecast to surge to 16,000 kilograms by 2012 from an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 kilograms in 2005.

More diabetics are being diagnosed, the incidence is increasing because of lifestyles and new methods of administering insulin – other than injection – require much more of the product.

The company said factories to make safflower insulin are cheaper to build than the traditional sort, and production costs could be cut by 40 per cent.

The results announced Wednesday have greatly reduced the risk that the product would not work, the company said.

"Insulin is a well-characterized compound for which a great deal of data already exists. With these high-risk scientific achievements behind us, we now transition to the execution stage of our clinical development plan for insulin," Baum said.