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Insulin is being “grown” genetically modified organisms in vats. It is not a simple molecule you get by mixing chemicals together. The very first application o

Insulin is being “grown” genetically modified organisms in vats. It is not a simple molecule you get by mixing chemicals together. The very first application of the human genome project. The whole process of production is non-trivial, every step heavily patented and secured. Also pretty expensive. There are new biotechs currently working on CURING diabetes, but no one is doing trials on humans yet. Means we’re at least 10 years away from a cure. And no, those are not crazy 18 year olds in a garage. Spark Therapeutics now has an injection to cure macular degeneration, Moderna is building a whole RNA modification platform with 19(!) individual drugs in the pipeline. It is very likely that we’ll see a major shift of medicine to curing, rather than treating in the next 20-25 years. Hep-C now has a cure. Still so, so amazing. The Human Genome project will turn out to be one of the most live-saving accomplishments of humanity, next to the green revolution in farming.

ABCLAW 9y ago
The process for introducing an insulin-gene plasmid, then selecting for and breeding the resulting recombinant bacteria is 101 level biochemistry that a Masters student could do in almost any decently equipped laboratory. Isolating the chemical on an industrial scale is where the difficulty comes in, but most of the equipment is fairly commoditized and it isn't prohibitively expensive or skill intensive. The marginal cost following the relatively inexpensive setup is exceptionally low, too - you feed the bugs, they make your drugs. Insulin would be priced as a commodity if not for the IP, approval and distribution issues - small biotech suffers from very poor distribution networks.
- shadowtree 9y ago
  what was groundbreaking 25 years ago is now 101 biochem. progress!
  - heavenlyhash 9y ago
    Which is why it's very confusing that products with such an utterly trivial production pipeline are remaining so expensive -- to say nothing of growing in cost over the years.

ABCLAW 9y ago

The process for introducing an insulin-gene plasmid, then selecting for and breeding the resulting recombinant bacteria is 101 level biochemistry that a Masters student could do in almost any decently equipped laboratory. Isolating the chemical on an industrial scale is where the difficulty comes in, but most of the equipment is fairly commoditized and it isn't prohibitively expensive or skill intensive. The marginal cost following the relatively inexpensive setup is exceptionally low, too - you feed the bugs, they make your drugs. Insulin would be priced as a commodity if not for the IP, approval and distribution issues - small biotech suffers from very poor distribution networks.

shadowtree 9y ago
what was groundbreaking 25 years ago is now 101 biochem. progress!
- heavenlyhash 9y ago
  Which is why it's very confusing that products with such an utterly trivial production pipeline are remaining so expensive -- to say nothing of growing in cost over the years.