An extract from dog pancreases made in a hot Toronto laboratory in the summer of 1921 (1921)
Frederick Banting and Charles Best, working in J. J. R. Macleod's department
Science · Medicine & the body
Insulin
Isolated 1921
Medicine — endocrinology and the treatment of diabetes
The peptide hormone, made by the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, that lowers blood glucose by driving it into muscle, fat and liver. Its absence causes type 1 diabetes, which was invariably fatal until Frederick Banting and Charles Best extracted the hormone from dog pancreases in a Toronto laboratory in 1921 and gave it to a dying fourteen-year-old the following January. It has been a scientific first several times over: the first protein to have its amino acid sequence determined, and the first medicine made by recombinant DNA.
How to spot them
- ▸Made by the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans; its antagonist is glucagon from the alpha cells
- ▸Toronto, 1921–22 — Banting, Best, Macleod and Collip, and the Nobel Prize of 1923
- ▸The first protein ever sequenced (Sanger, 1955) and the first recombinant DNA medicine (1982)
- ▸Its name comes from the Latin for island
- ▸51 amino acids in two chains, A and B, joined by disulfide bridges
Key facts
Leonard Thompson, a dying fourteen-year-old at Toronto General Hospital in January 1922 (1922)
The first patient; the first injection failed, the purified second one worked
Produced by the beta cells of the islets described by a 22-year-old German medical student in 1869 (1869)
Paul Langerhans described the islets in his doctoral thesis, without knowing what they did
Frederick Sanger's achievement of 1955 — the first protein ever to have its sequence read (1955)
It won Sanger the 1958 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the first of his two
Dorothy Hodgkin's X-ray crystallographic structure, finally solved in 1969 (1969)
She had begun work on the crystals in 1935
Humulin, licensed in 1982 as the first medicine made by recombinant DNA (1982)
Genentech and Eli Lilly replaced pig and cow extracts with a human sequence made in bacteria
The 1923 Nobel Prize whose winner immediately split his share with a junior colleague left out (1923)
Banting shared his half with Best; Macleod shared his with Collip
The patent sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar
Banting believed a discovery this important should not be profited from
Key ideas
- It is the body's storage signal: high after a meal, it tells cells to take glucose up, build glycogen and make fat, while glucagon does the reverse between meals.
- Type 1 diabetes is an absolute deficiency from autoimmune destruction of the beta cells; type 2 is resistance to a hormone that is still being made, at least at first.
- The 1922 breakthrough did not cure diabetes, it converted it from a rapidly fatal disease into a manageable lifelong one.
Quick-fire facts
- •Secreted by the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas; alpha cells make glucagon, delta cells somatostatin
- •The islets were described by Paul Langerhans in 1869 and named after him by Édouard Laguesse in 1893
- •Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski showed in 1889 that removing a dog's pancreas caused diabetes
- •The name comes from the Latin 'insula', island, and was proposed before the hormone itself was isolated
- •Frederick Banting and Charles Best obtained the first working extract in Toronto in 1921; James Collip purified it enough for human use
- •Leonard Thompson, aged 14, received the first successful injections in January 1922
- •Banting and J. J. R. Macleod shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Banting, aged 32, remains the youngest laureate in that category
- •The patent was assigned to the University of Toronto for one dollar
- •Frederick Sanger determined the amino acid sequence between 1951 and 1955 — the first protein ever sequenced — and won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- •The molecule has 51 amino acids in two chains, A (21 residues) and B (30), linked by disulfide bonds
- •Dorothy Hodgkin solved its three-dimensional structure by X-ray crystallography in 1969
- •Humulin, approved in 1982, was the first recombinant DNA product licensed as a medicine
- •World Diabetes Day is 14 November, Banting's birthday
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Sources
- The Nobel Foundation — The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1923
- Diabetes UK — Type 1 diabetes
- The Nobel Foundation — The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1958