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Insulin—From its Discovery to the Industrial Synthesis of Modern Insulin Analogues
Author(s) -
Moroder Luis,
Musiol HansJürgen
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201702493
Subject(s) - insulin , semisynthesis , human insulin , diabetes mellitus , native chemical ligation , chemistry , biology , chemical synthesis , biochemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , endocrinology , in vitro
After the discovery of insulin as a drug for diabetes, the pharmaceutical companies were faced with the challenge to meet the demand for insulin with the highest possible degree of purity in the required quantities from animal sources. The observation of an immune reaction of patients to insulin from animal pancreatic extracts made the availability of human insulin of highest priority. Only the enzyme‐catalyzed semisynthesis at the C‐terminus of the insulin B‐chain led to a commercial process, but it depended on porcine insulin and was aggravated by supply concerns. The advent of rDNA technology allowed the commercial preparation of human insulin by biosynthesis in virtually unlimited quantities. An increased chemical diversity was only envisaged through chemical synthesis, which was simplified by advances in solid‐phase peptide synthesis and chemical ligation. Single‐chain insulin precursors are now being synthesized that should enable fast screening of insulin analogues for improved biophysical, biological, and thus promising new therapeutic properties, as well as for the industrial manufacture of insulin analogues not accessible by biosynthesis.