The Biohacking Movement and Open Source Insulin

szczys writes: Since early last century, insulin has been produced from the pancreas of animals. In the late 1970s we figured out how to synthesize insulin using bacteria or yeast. As the biohacking movement has grown, insulin production has been a common target, but for some reason we're not there yet. Dan Maloney looked into the backstory (including the amazing story of the Saxl family who produced life-saving insulin during WWII) and a new startup that is trying to get Biohackers working on the problem. Update: 07/30 21:56 GMT by T : That's WWII above, not WWI; mea culpa.

Comments

Re:Sounds Great

[Andy Dodd]

Um, no, a 1000 unit vial (10 mL of U-100) costs $25 for regular and NPH insulins. (If you're paying more than this, blame the pharmacy. This is one of the few cases where I root for Walmart - they've managed to get Novo onboard with selling Novolin R and N for $25/vial)

Unless you're purchasing Lantus or Novolog/Humalog (which most diabetics including myself are), which are MUCH newer than 1978 and still have active patents. (Some of Lantus' are about to expire or recently expired, but Novartis played some legal games to manage to block generic Lantus from the market until late 2016...) Even after "generics" of the "designer" insulins launch, the FDA's rules on "biosimilars" are going to slow down this market. (IIRC, generic Lantus IS available in India at significantly reduced prices.)