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25 questions · 13 almanac · 0 findings

Insulin and Diabetes Treatment

The discovery and therapeutic use of insulin.

Connects to Endocrinology and Hormones3 X-Ray Crystallography3 Biochemistry2 Nobel Prize History2 Protein Structure2 Cancer Biology1 Cell Biology1 Drug Discovery and Pharmacology1 Enzymes and Enzymology1 Genetic Engineering and Recombinant DNA1 History of Medicine1 Immunology1
Almanac An Afternoon in a Basement Changed Diabetes
  • Why did Frederick Banting tie off the pancreatic ducts of dogs before extracting a hormone from the islets of Langerhans?
  • What was the standard treatment for type 1 diabetes before insulin was isolated, and why was it inadequate?
  • What role did James Collip play in making the pancreatic extract safe for human injection?
  • Who was Leonard Thompson, and why does his 1922 injection mark a turning point in medicine?
Almanac A Dying Boy Improves Within Hours
  • How was type 1 diabetes treated before insulin became available, and why was that treatment only a delay?
  • What went wrong with the first insulin injection given to Leonard Thompson, and how did James Collip fix it?
  • Who were the four researchers credited with isolating and purifying insulin, and how was the Nobel Prize credit divided among them?
  • How did the discovery of insulin change diabetes from a fatal diagnosis into a manageable chronic condition?
Almanac Months of Dying, Reversed by Autumn
  • How did Banting and Best isolate insulin and prove it could treat a dying diabetic patient?
  • Why was Banting so angry about sharing the Nobel Prize with John Macleod?
  • Why did Banting give half his prize money to Best, and Macleod give half of his to Collip?
  • How did a type 1 diabetes diagnosis change from a death sentence measured in months to a manageable condition?
Almanac Insulin, Read Letter by Letter
  • What technique did Sanger use to label the terminal ends of protein fragments during sequencing?
  • How many amino acids make up bovine insulin, and why did establishing this exact sequence matter for biochemistry?
Almanac Thirty-Four Years to See One Hormone
  • How long did Dorothy Hodgkin work on determining insulin's structure, and what other structures did she solve along the way?
  • What resolution did Hodgkin's 1969 insulin structure achieve, and why did that matter?
  • How did knowing insulin's precise 3D architecture lead to engineered analogue insulins?