The year 1982 marked a huge step in diabetes care and ushered in a new era of drug production, thanks to the development of Humulin", the first fully human insulin product. Until then, diabetes patients were given insulin derived from animal sources, mostly cattle and pigs. At around the same time, advancements in gene technology finally allowed for the manufacturing of fully human insulin.
The molecule insulin was discovered in the early 1920s, and the first injections of insulin from cattle into humans quickly followed. Although this early insulin was extremely impure and had numerous side effects, it certainly saved the lives of many diabetics.
In the following decades there were further advancements in the development of insulin, including improvements in purity and the chemical synthesis of human insulin. In 1978 researchers at Genentech, Inc., in San Francisco, California began working on producing fully human insulin from recombinant DNA in
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