Celebrating 100 years of insulin

Excerpt

Work in the University of Toronto (ON, Canada) during 1921 culminated in January 1922, when Leonard Thompson received his first injection of a purified pancreatic extract containing insulin. This remarkable event built on many years of ground-breaking scientific work by a number of individuals around the world, including Claude Bernard, Paul Langerhans, Oskar Minkowski, Joseph von Mering, Eugene Opie, Georg Ludwig Zülzer and Nicolas Paulesco, to name but a few. The unique achievements of the Toronto team, collaborating with industry, includes the speed at which they were able to purify, test and produce insulin in sufficient quantities for it to become a viable treatment for diabetes. These events have been described eloquently by Michael Bliss in his book: The Discovery of Insulin [1]. The immediate and long-term consequences of insulin therapy are life-changing for individuals with diabetes and continue to stimulate scientific research and learning. …