The process for introducing an insulin-gene plasmid, then selecting for and breeding the resulting recombinant bacteria is 101 level biochemistry that a Masters

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.