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CNBC: Apple Hires Secret Team for Treating Diabetes


FILE - A woman walks past an Apple store in Beijing, China, July 28, 2016.
FILE - A woman walks past an Apple store in Beijing, China, July 28, 2016.

Apple has hired a team of biomedical engineers as part of a secret initiative, initially envisioned by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors to treat diabetes, CNBC reported citing three people familiar with the matter.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

The engineers are expected to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, California, close to the corporate headquarters, CNBC said.

The news comes at the time when the line between pharmaceuticals and technology is blurring as companies are joining forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices that combine biology, software and hardware, thereby jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics.

Last year, GlaxoSmithKline and Google parent Alphabet unveiled a joint company aimed at marketing bioelectronic devices to fight illness by attaching to individual nerves.

U.S. biotech firms Setpoint Medical and EnteroMedics Inc. have already shown early benefits of bioelectronics in treating rheumatoid arthritis and suppressing appetite in the obese.

Other companies playing around the idea of bioelectronics include Medtronic Plc, Proteus Digital Technology, Sanofi SA and Biogen.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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