Insulin Discovered: A Cure for Diabetes Found
Frederick Banting, a struggling orthopedic surgeon, and Charles Best, a 22-year-old medical student, isolated insulin from dog pancreases at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921. Their first human trial on fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson in January 1922 was a near failure: the impure extract caused an allergic reaction. Biochemist James Collip refined the extraction process, and a second injection saved the boy's life. Before insulin, a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence within months. Banting sold the patent to the university for one dollar, saying "insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world." He won the Nobel Prize in 1923 at age 32, the youngest laureate in medicine.
July 27, 1921
105 years ago
Key Figures & Places
insulin
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Frederick Banting
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University of Toronto
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biochemist
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hormone
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blood sugar
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University of Toronto
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Biochemist
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Frederick Banting
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Hormone
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Insulin
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Blood sugar level
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Charles Best
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Páncreas
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