The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Xeris Pharmaceuticals’s glucagon pen for diabetes patients, aged 2 years and up. The pen is meant to treat severely low sugar levels in diabetes patients.
Xeris is a specialty pharmaceutical company that uses novel technology platforms to develop and commercialize ready-to-use injectable and infusible drug formulations
Gvoke, the drugmaker's glucagon pen, is a pre-filled device with liquid stable form of glucagon.
According to Xeris, glucagon is a metabolic hormone secreted by the pancreas that raises blood glucose levels by causing the liver to rapidly convert glycogen into glucose, which is then released into the bloodstream. Glucagon and insulin are two critical hormones in a glycemic control system that keep blood glucose at the right level in healthy individuals. In people with diabetes who are dependent on insulin, this control system is disrupted and insulin must be injected to avoid hyperglycemia. The opposite effect, or low blood glucose—hypoglycemia—is also prevalent in this population due to dysregulated glucagon secretion.