100 Years of insulin: A chemical engineering perspective

Insulin was isolated in 1921, with the first human patient treated in 1922, and large-scale production began in 1923. In this perspectives article I provide some historical context leading to the automated insulin delivery (AID) systems that regulate blood glucose in individuals with type 1 diabetes, but also discuss the evolution of insulin production from the pancreases of cows and pigs to modern genetic engineering techniques to produce “rapid-acting” insulin. This topic is of interest for chemical engineers for several reasons. For one, process control engineers have played a major role in the development of algorithms for automated insulin delivery and in continuous glucose sensor development. In addition, the biopharmaceutical production of insulin using genetic engineering techniques is the domain of chemical process engineers. The major objective is to understand the current state of diabetes technology, with a focus on type 1 diabetes.