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University of Toronto <\/span><\/a> Purified insulin in a 1925 ampoule from Melbourne, Australia, and in flasks from a batch produced in 1924 in Toronto, CanadaUniversity of Toronto <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In 1922, the researchers tested their pancreatic extract on a 14-year-old boy with diabetes who was being treated at Toronto General Hospital, but the side effects were too debilitating, and the experiment was stopped. Canadian biochemist James Collip (1892\u20131965) further purified the insulin, and the test was resumed. Subsequent injections\u2014in the same patient\u2014caused his blood glucose to drop from 520 micrograms per deciliter (mg\/dl) of blood to 120 mg\/dl.<\/p>\n Their discoveries were awarded Nobel prizes. In 1923, Banting and Macleod won the prizes for Physiology and Medicine. Both informally shared the credit and prize money with Best and Collip. In 1958, after identifying the amino acid sequence of the insulin molecule, British biologist Frederick Sanger (1918\u20132013) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1969, British biochemist Dorothy Hodgkin, who had received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for her studies in X-ray crystallography, used her technique to define the hormone’s spatial structure.<\/p>\n Until the beginning of the twentieth century, people with diabetes were put on a strict diet with an extremely low calorie intake which could be as fatal as the disease itself. “Insulin is a milestone in the history of medicine because people with Type 1 diabetes, whose bodies don’t produce this hormone, were condemned to die within a few weeks after the disease manifested,” says endocrinologist Domingos Malerbi, president of the Brazilian Society of Diabetes (SBD) and president of the Diabetes Department of the Brazilian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism (SBEM). Malerbi adds that for those who have Type 2 diabetes (whose bodies do produce insulin, but in insufficient quantities), the new treatment can postpone the disease’s complications, such as blindness or infarction.<\/p>\n Wellcome Collection <\/span><\/a> Surgeon Frederick Banting (right<\/em>) and his assistant Charles Best discovered insulin in 1921Wellcome Collection <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In late 1923, pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe began producing insulin. In Brazil, production began in 1978 and continued until 2001 at Biobr\u00e1s, a company established in 1971 by physician Marcos Lu\u00eds dos Mares Guia (1935\u20132002), a professor of biochemistry at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). Later, Mares Guia was named president of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) from 1991 to 1993. With initial funding from the Superintendency for Northeast Development (SUDENE), Biobr\u00e1s began operations in 1974 in Montes Claros, in northern Minas Gerais, incorporating seven master’s students from the biochemistry department at UFMG, in addition to the company’s three partners.<\/p>\n \u201cMarcos had a feel for biochemical engineering, even though he was a doctor,\u201d commented engineer Guilherme Caldas Emrich, who Mares Guia invited to be a partner in the company. The third partner was engineer Walfrido dos Mares Guia, the doctor’s brother, then a professor at the Pit\u00e1goras preparatory school, which the two brothers had also created. Walfrido was later vice-governor of Minas Gerais State from 1994 to 1999 and Minister of Tourism from 2003 to 2007.<\/p>\n Biobr\u00e1s benefited from a favorable political and economic climate. The 1970s were a time of intense economic growth, known as an economic miracle. Military governments had instituted a \u201cpolicy of import substitution and protection for national industry,\u201d observed economist Frederico Turolla of the College of Advertising and Marketing, in a 2001 study on companies that had been launched by universities. The research was developed for the Administrative Development Foundation (FUNDAP), a S\u00e3o Paulo state agency that closed in 2015.<\/p>\n