History of Insulin
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Behind the Scenes with Insulin
Since its discovery in 1921, insulin has been used worldwide by many patients suffering from a variety of diabetic conditions. Read on below to find out the important milestones in history that led to what insulin became today.
Discovery of Insulin: Sir Frederick Banting's Legacy
In 1921, Frederick G. Banting and Charles Best tied a string around a dog pancreatic duct. After a few weeks, all the pancreas digestive cells died and only pancreatic islets were left. They isolated the protein from these islets and insulin was discovered. The purified insulin was successfully tested on Leonard Thompson in 1922.
Through the years, many researchers continued Sir Frederick's legacy and tried to improve insulin but the basic production method used remained unchanged for a long time. Insulin was always extracted from the pancreas of cattles and livestock, and subsequently purified. It should be noted that the chemical structure of insulin in these types of livestock is only slightly different than the structure of the human insulin, which contributes to why it functions very well in the human system.
As the years passed, entering the late 1970s, the biotechnology era came and revolutionized the method of insulin synthesis. By that time, researchers had already discovered and found out the chemical structure of insulin. Through various experiments, they finally were able to determine the exact location of the insulin gene, which is mapped at the top-most portion of chromosome 11.
In 1977, a research team had spliced a rat insulin into a bacterium and that then produced insulin. 1980, researchers used genetic engineering to manufacture human insulin. In 1982, Eli Lilly Corporation produced human insulin that became the 1st approved genetically engineered pharmaceutical product.
Through these experiments, it was discovered that giving the appropriate dosage of insulin to diabetic patients is very important as this helps to ensure that there will not be any side consequences such as hypoglycemia which usually caused by excessive dosage of insulin. A right dosage that meets the needs of an individual patient and the treatment objectives should be established with the cooperation of the patient and this is dependent on the glycemic response to food consumption and levels of exercise. Furthermore, other factors such as onset, time and duration of insulin action are required to be considered to help facilitate the administration of insulin to patients.
Development of insulin to large-scale production
Researchers soon realized that they require the essential human protein that produces insulin. Manufacturers get this through an amino acid-sequencing machine that is able to put together and synthesize the DNA. As time passed, manufacturers soon knew the exact order of insulin's amino acids, so they just need to input insulin's amino acids, and the sequencing machine strings the pre-determined amino acids together to create an insulin molecule. Large tanks are also essential, in which they serve as mediums by which the nutrient broth can be stored for the bacteria to grow.
Synthesizing human insulin molecules is a complicated biochemical process comprising of multiple steps that depends on recombinant DNA techniques and a deep understanding of the insulin gene and its mapping region on the chromosome. Manufacturers then manipulate biological precursors to insulin such that it is able to be grown inside even the most structurally-simplest bacterial cells.
Click on the diagram below for an enlarged version of the timeline for insulin dating back to the early 20th century:
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