Dr. John Patton visited and shared the story of inhaled insulin!
Despite the arctic blast of cold that settled over Minnesota , Dr. John S. Patton, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Nektar Therapeutics (formerly Inhale Therapeutics) in San Carlos , California , agreed to brave the weather in order to visit the University of Minnesota at the end of January. The visit appeared to be a huge success and graduate students and post-docs from several departments participated, including several Pharmacy students.
Dr. Patton presented his seminar, “The Story of Inhaled Insulin” where he discussed the mechanisms of insulin transport and talked about the advantages of peptides and proteins as therapeutic agents. He even did something that is rarely done in seminars – he pulled out an insulin inhaler and demonstrated how the insulin dry powder is dispersed from the blister foil into a chamber where it is subsequently inhaled. Following the seminar, Dr. Patton meet with graduate students and post-docs for an open discussion where he emphasized the importance of learning and continuing to learn after graduate school through post-doctoral fellowships. Dr. Patton related learning to climbing a mountain by saying, “the longer you keep going up a mountain, the better the view is”. Dr. Patton also talked about how to start your own business, about his career, and more about the dry powder insulin formulation. It was a terrific discussion and nice to have someone so candid among us.
The visit by Dr. Patton was sponsored, in part, by funds received by Pfizer Global Research & Development. These funds were to be used to invite guest lecturers to the Department of Pharmaceutics in order to enhance our graduate education. We are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to invite Dr. Patton! If you have suggestions for future guest lecturers, please send e-mail to dhur0002@umn.edu.
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