History of Insulin
Insulin is a hormone produced by the body to help convert consumed foods into energy. It controls blood glucose levels so that body cells will be able to access the calories contained in the glucose. People with diabetes need insulin injections because they either can’t properly use the insulin that they produce or that they don’t produce enough insulin to use or both. Insulin cannot be taken as a pill, because it might be destroyed by the stomach during digestion. The only way to get insulin into the body is through injection. Insulin can be injected into the body with either a syringe or a delivery system such as an insulin pen or pump. All these different ways of insulin injections have come a long way since they were first used to treat patients with diabetes in the 1920s.
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1869
Paul Langerhans, a medical student in Berlin, discovers a distinct collection of cells within the pancreas, later called the Islets of Langerhans
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1901
Eugene Opie discovers that the Islets of Langerhans produce insulin and that the destruction of these cells resulted in diabetes
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Leonard Thompson, a 14 year old boy with type 1 diabetes, is the first patient given the medical administration of insulin
1922
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1922
Frederick Banting and Charles Best improve their techniques for the production of insulin and Eli Lilly becomes the first insulin manufacturer
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1923
Frederick Banting and John Macleod are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin
1936
Hans Christian Hagedorn discovers that protamine can be used to develop a slow-acting insulin
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1950
NPH (neutral protamine Hagedorn), an intermediate acting insulin, is marketed by Danish company Novo Nordisk.
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1955
Insulin is sequenced by Frederick Sanger, and is the first protein to be fully sequenced
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1978
Insulin is then the first human protein to be manufactured through biotechnology by a company called Genentech
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1982
Synthetic insulin is named ‘human insulin’ marking it as distinct from insulin derived from animals. Humilin, manufactured by Eli Lilly, becomes widely available through the 1980s.
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1996
Eli Lilly markets the analogue insulin lispro under the trade name Humalog. Analogue insulin is a genetically modified form of insulin whereby the amino acid sequence is altered to change how the insulin is absorbed, distributed, metabolised and excreted.
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