On October 26, 2005, The Daily Progress
(Charlottesville, Va.) featured Paul Manning's personal and corporate
mission to help people with type 1 diabetes. The article is noteworthy
because it introduces PBM's product development efforts in the diabetic
category until there is a cure for the disease.
PBM Seeks to
Help Diabetics
By Sarah Barry / Daily
Progress staff writer
GORDONSVILLE - Hidden behind green hills and golden orchards, PBM Products has been quietly
growing for the last eight years, distributing baby formulas, dietary
supplements and a wide range of other products across the nation.
 |
Paul B. Manning,
president and CEO of
PBM Products, sits with a single
serving
of his company's new GlucoBurst gel.
The Daily
Progress / Brady Wolfe |
Working out of antebellum homes and hotels that have been converted
into offices, the company takes in more than $100 million each year and is
continually expanding its interests.
Paul B. Manning, the founder, president and chief executive officer of
the company that bears his initials, has far-reaching goals for PBM
Products and for himself. Aside from maintaining a healthy business, he
wants to help people, particularly those with type 1, or juvenile,
diabetes.
To that end, PBM Products has launched its new GlucoBurst glucose gel. The gel contains
exactly 15 grams of glucose, the dosage recommended by the American
Diabetes Guidelines for a diabetic whose blood sugar has dropped
dangerously low.
People with type 1 diabetes produce little to no insulin and must take
insulin shots to help their bodies convert sugar, or glucose, into energy.
If they don’t take insulin, the sugar in their blood can build up.
If they haven’t eaten for a while or have been exercising, however,
their normal dose of insulin can deplete their blood of glucose
altogether.
“You are trying to lower the blood sugar but you want it within a
range,” explained Shirley Fleishman, a certified diabetes educator who
works at the University of Virginia. “It’s sometimes hard to achieve such
perfection.”
The designer of the new GlucoBurst formula, Cindy Barber, is a diabetic
herself and has had times where she needed to get her blood sugar up
quickly. In such cases, diabetics often drink juice or eat candy, but
juice can be cumbersome and candy melts. “I like to ride horses and it’s
hard to carry stuff out there,” Barber said.
Glucose gels and tablets have been around for many years but Barber
said past products were imperfect. “The gels that are currently out there
are hard to squeeze out,” Barber said. As the vice president of research
and development at PBM, she wanted GlucoBurst packaged in a user-friendly
way.
Manning also has a special interest in helping diabetic patients. Two
of his three children have type 1 diabetes. “Living with children with
diabetes, you learn a lot about what their needs are,” Manning said.
He knew from past experience that candy and juice boxes pose problems.
“For candy, they’re going to eat it when they don’t need it,” he said. And
he didn’t like glucose tablets because they would be impossible to chew
for someone in a diabetic coma.
Manning has been committed to helping people with type 1 diabetes for
several years. Not only does he work to develop new products for
diabetics, he also has created the Islet Replacement Research
Foundation, which has donated more than $1 million to diabetes
research, the majority of which has gone to UVa.
Islet research focuses on introducing healthy, insulin-producing
pancreatic cells into the liver of someone who is diabetic. Researchers
are hoping that the body of the diabetic will then begin to produce
insulin of its own.
“Paul Manning’s passion for finding a cure for diabetes has had an
enormous impact on the research being done at UVa,” said Dr. Arthur
Garson, dean of UVa’s School of Medicine. “We are fortunate to have a
friend in Paul who - and these are his own words - will settle for nothing
less than ‘putting his thumbprint on the cure for diabetes.’”
Until doctors can find a cure, though, Manning wants to make life
better for diabetics today by producing more products like GlucoBurst.
Read
the Article
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