Alinea: Eclectic approach to diabetes

Because of the enormous complexity of diabetes, treating the disease means not only controlling glucose, but also treating a host of neurological and cardiovascular complications. Alinea Pharmaceuticals Inc. was spun out of the Institute for Diabetes Discovery with three diabetes-related programs and the express purpose of developing therapeutics that attack the disease and related disorders from multiple directions.

The company's lead candidate, lidorestat, is an aldose reductase inhibitor in Phase IIa testing for diabetic complications. Alinea also has a preclinical diabetes program targeting protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) and another for dyslipidemia with an undisclosed target...