Insulin / en 'A distinctly Canadian legacy': Frederick Banting helped pioneer aviation medicine during the Second World War /news/u-t-s-frederick-banting-helped-pioneer-aviation-medicine-during-second-world-war <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">'A distinctly Canadian legacy': Frederick Banting helped pioneer aviation medicine during the Second World War</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-05/Banting%20and%20aviation_combined-image-v1-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=z34Eu3TK 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-05/Banting%20and%20aviation_combined-image-v1-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=F_HPIXOq 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-05/Banting%20and%20aviation_combined-image-v1-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=eEwlSVKs 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-05/Banting%20and%20aviation_combined-image-v1-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=z34Eu3TK" alt="Left: Flight deck, ink and pencil on tracing paper, by Hubert Reginald Rogers. Right: Frederick Banting, oil on board, by Tibor Polya."> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-11-11T09:28:45-05:00" title="Thursday, November 11, 2021 - 09:28" class="datetime">Thu, 11/11/2021 - 09:28</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p>Left: Flight deck, ink and pencil on tracing paper, by Hubert Reginald Rogers. Right: Frederick Banting, oil on board, by Tibor Polya.</p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/jim-oldfield" hreflang="en">Jim Oldfield</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/alumni" hreflang="en">ֱ</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/frederick-banting" hreflang="en">Frederick Banting</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/occupational-therapy" hreflang="en">Occupational Therapy</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/remembrance-day" hreflang="en">Remembrance Day</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Doctor and researcher. Inventor and Nobel laureate. Painter and war hero.</p> <p><strong>Frederick Banting</strong>&nbsp;is widely recognized for achievements in many fields – including, famously, the&nbsp;<a href="https://insulin100.utoronto.ca/">discovery of insulin</a> with colleagues at the University of Toronto and partner hospitals a century ago.</p> <p>His contributions in the First World War are also well-known&nbsp;– as a physician on the front lines and at the Battle of Canal du Nord, where he was injured by shrapnel yet kept working and ultimately&nbsp;received the Military Cross.</p> <p>But often overlooked are Banting’s efforts before and during the Second World War on medical aspects of aviation. Planes had reached new levels of altitude and speed, creating harsh conditions for aircrews and health problems such as low oxygen and G-force induced blackout.</p> <p>Banting used his national influence to restart and grow research on this vital aspect of the war. His efforts helped establish the field of aviation medicine in Canada and built the foundation for advances in Canadian aerospace medicine that continue today.</p> <div class="image-with-caption left"> <div> <figure role="group" class="caption caption-drupal-media align-left"> <div> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-05/Banting%20in%201941%2C%20U%20of%20T%20Archives-crop.jpg" width="250" height="375" alt="Banting in 1941"> </div> </div> <figcaption><em>Frederick Banting in 1941 (University of Toronto Archives)</em></figcaption> </figure> </div> </div> <p>“Banting was absolutely instrumental to aviation medicine in Canada,” says&nbsp;<strong>Jordan Bimm</strong>, a post-doctoral researcher and instructor at the University of Chicago&nbsp;who studies the history of science, technology and medicine with a focus on human aspects of space exploration.</p> <p>“The field would not have developed without him&nbsp;– at least not in the same way, largely because he was such a powerful medical celebrity. He got things done that others could not.”</p> <p>In 1938, Banting, as a veteran, saw the threat of war was again real, says Bimm, who completed his undergraduate degree in history at ֱ. He was persuaded to focus on aviation research by Maj.&nbsp;A.A. James&nbsp;of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, who had been arguing for Canada to urgently invest in this field – as Germany had done for years.</p> <p>Banting in turn lobbied for federal support and his efforts led to creation of the Associate Committee on Aviation Medical Research of the National Research Council in 1939. Banting chaired the committee, which funded aviation research and equipment across the country in universities and military units.</p> <p>When war came in fall 1939, Canada already had the nucleus of a multi-disciplinary aviation medical research team with equipment available or in construction, according to&nbsp;Chester Stewart, a professor and later dean of medicine at Dalhousie University who had worked with Banting to document the state of medical research and training in Canada.</p> <p>“Some of this equipment was of totally new design and permitted investigation of problems hitherto almost untouched,” Stewart later wrote for the journal&nbsp;<em>Public Affairs</em>&nbsp;in <a href="https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/75588/publicaffairs_vol10_iss2_pp98_104.pdf?sequence=1">a&nbsp;seminal article</a>&nbsp;that details the committee’s impact on Canadian aviation research during the war.</p> <p>A combined cold room and low-pressure chamber at the Canadian military’s No. 1 clinical investigation unit, on the grounds of the former Eglinton Hunt Club on Avenue Road in Toronto, became the first on the continent to replicate conditions for the study of high-altitude illnesses.</p> <div class="image-with-caption right"> <div> <div class="align-right"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/2023-05/Human%20centrifuge%20in%20Toronto%20-%20Library%20and%20Archives%20Canada.jpg" width="318" height="227" alt="Human centrifuge in Toronto"> </div> </div> <em>A human centrifuge in Toronto</em></div> </div> <p>Researchers from ֱ used the unit to design the first oxygen mask that did not freeze at low temperatures. Additional work by ֱ physicists led to the discovery of dry oxygen that further improved mask design, and an oxygen demand valve that automated oxygen intake based on the individual needs of aircrew.</p> <p>British and U.S. researchers also used the unit and other Canadian facilities, according to Stewart, who wrote that medical aviation scientists in this country were ahead of their American counterparts in some areas even before the war began, and published prolifically throughout the conflict.</p> <p>Toronto’s No. 1 unit also became home to the first human centrifuge in any country outside Germany. This large and expensive machine replicated the human effects of gravitational force at high speeds, which included blurred vision and blackouts.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="align-center"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/scale_image_750_width_/public/2023-05/utarmsIB_2003-3-1MS-horz.jpg?itok=DFphJEao" width="750" height="500" alt="Wilbur Franks, professor in the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research" class="image-style-scale-image-750-width-"> </div> </div> <p><em>Wilbur Franks, professor in the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research, poses with the Franks Flying Suit – the worlds first G-suit, which allowed Allied fighter pilots to remain conscious when executing sharp turns at high speeds&nbsp;(Jack Marshall Photography/University of Toronto Archives)</em></p> <p><strong>Wilbur Franks</strong>, a ֱ alumnus and cancer researcher working under Banting, used the centrifuge to develop one of the world’s first anti-gravity suits. The Franks Flying Suit, made of fluid-filled rubber, saw combat action over North Africa as early as 1942 and informed later designs of U.S. aviation and aerospace suits.</p> <p>More advances came from the work in Toronto and by other Canadian teams, including non-fogging, wide-vision goggles, methods to detect carbon monoxide, better communications equipment and noise-reduction helmets.</p> <p>Some historians have&nbsp;questioned the value&nbsp;of this output&nbsp;and wondered if Banting’s unparalleled power to direct research funding was always in the best interest of science. But most agree the work was significant, and that it created a lasting interest in aviation medicine in Canada.</p> <p>“Unlike insulin, the individual discoveries matter less than the slow, incremental story about an influx of attention and focus for a niche field, which has left a distinctly Canadian legacy in aviation and aerospace medicine,” says Bimm. “That’s Banting’s real contribution here.”</p> <p>The equipment and research teams that Banting helped set up produced advances after the war, though at reduced speed. Canada became the third nation in space in 1962 with the launch of the Alouette-1 satellite, and later made advances on the vestibular system and balance during space flight, and a type of motion sickness called space adaptation syndrome.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="align-center"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/scale_image_750_width_/public/2023-05/First-spacewalk-for-David-Saint-Jacques_CSA%20and%20NASA-crop.jpg?itok=Vr63Awcr" width="750" height="500" alt="David Saint-Jacques on a spacewalk " class="image-style-scale-image-750-width-"> </div> </div> <p><em>David Saint-Jacques on a spacewalk (photo courtesy of CSA and NASA)</em></p> <p>A disproportionately large number of Canadian astronauts have come from medical or health-science backgrounds, relative to other countries – another example of aviation medicine’s lasting influence, Bimm says. They include&nbsp;<strong>Roberta Bondar</strong>,&nbsp;David Williams,&nbsp;Robert Thirsk,&nbsp;David Saint-Jacques&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ken Money.</p> <p>The military No. 1 unit on Avenue Road evolved and in 1994 moved to Downsview, which remains an important centre for research on technology and human performance through Defence Research and Development Canada.</p> <p><strong>Joan Saary</strong>&nbsp;is an occupational medicine specialist and associate professor in ֱ’s&nbsp;department of medicine, who is also a consultant physician and flight surgeon working with the Canadian Forces Environmental Medicine Establishment and the Canadian Space Agency.</p> <p>She says Canada is uniquely positioned to play a role in aerospace medicine through medical and other technological expertise. She plans to help build that potential with a new fellowship program at ֱ, which will offer interdisciplinary and experiential training in aerospace medicine.</p> <p>“Unlike traditional medical training programs, fellows will participate in unique experiences such as flight school to understand the aviation environment,” says Saary. “We have a cadre of experts in this country who can teach and mentor another generation to solve the health challenges of space travel, which is increasingly a civilian activity.”</p> <p>Training and research in aerospace medicine often centres on enabling health and safety in extreme environments, and here Canada has an edge due to geography. “Canada is an interesting analogue for space,” says Saary. “In space environments there are issues of distance, delayed communications&nbsp;and an inability to evacuate in harsh, remote conditions, which are similar concerns in the Canadian North.”</p> <p>Technologies developed to mitigate risk in aerospace environments can also be applied to terrestrial medicine, says Saary, who began her Canadian Forces work with divers. Recent examples include satellite tracking of COVID-19 and other pandemics, clinical use of miniature cameras initially designed for space&nbsp;and cardiac monitors now used in intensive care.</p> <p>A key goal of the fellowship program is to prepare graduates who can foster knowledge exchange&nbsp;and contribute in academic, military and civilian organizations.</p> <p>“Canada has quietly changed the world through aviation and aerospace medicine innovations for decades,” Saary says. “I think we can do a lot more of that.”</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 11 Nov 2021 14:28:45 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 171279 at Royal Canadian Mint commemorates insulin discovery at ֱ with two-dollar coin /news/royal-canadian-mint-commemorates-insulin-discovery-u-t-two-dollar-coin <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Royal Canadian Mint commemorates insulin discovery at ֱ with two-dollar coin</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2021%20%242%20Circ%20with%20colour%20-%20100th%20Ann%20of%20the%20Discovery%20of%20Insulin%20Rev%203Q-crop-main.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=gDVuIoQ8 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2021%20%242%20Circ%20with%20colour%20-%20100th%20Ann%20of%20the%20Discovery%20of%20Insulin%20Rev%203Q-crop-main.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=EbI-mnme 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2021%20%242%20Circ%20with%20colour%20-%20100th%20Ann%20of%20the%20Discovery%20of%20Insulin%20Rev%203Q-crop-main.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=cH3cqFQ4 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2021%20%242%20Circ%20with%20colour%20-%20100th%20Ann%20of%20the%20Discovery%20of%20Insulin%20Rev%203Q-crop-main.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=gDVuIoQ8" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>wangyana</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-07-13T15:13:39-04:00" title="Tuesday, July 13, 2021 - 15:13" class="datetime">Tue, 07/13/2021 - 15:13</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(Photo courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mint)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/yanan-wang" hreflang="en">Yanan Wang</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/charles-best" hreflang="en">Charles Best</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/diabetes" hreflang="en">Diabetes</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/frederick-banting" hreflang="en">Frederick Banting</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p style="margin-bottom:11px">The Royal Canadian Mint has released a new two-dollar coin commemorating the discovery of insulin 100 years ago by scientists at the University of Toronto.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">The coin features a monomer, a building block of the insulin molecule, as well as red blood cells, glucose, insulin cells and the scientific instruments – vial, mortar and pestle, Erlenmeyer flask – used in the early formulation of insulin.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“The Nobel Prize-winning Canadian discovery of insulin in 1921 is one of the 20<sup>th</sup> century’s most celebrated medical discoveries, which has saved millions of lives in Canada and around the world,” Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister and minister of finance,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/royal-canadian-mint-2-circulation-coin-marks-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-discovery-of-insulin-880598796.html">said in a statement</a>.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Scientists <b>Frederick Banting</b>, <b>Charles Best</b>, <b>J.J.R. Macleod</b> and <b>James Collip </b>worked together to isolate and purify insulin in a ֱ laboratory. Isolation of the hormone transformed medical outcomes and dramatically improved the quality of life for diabetes patients, who were previously debilitated by the disease.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">ֱ is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery this year with a slate of events. The university hosted an <a href="/news/towards-cure-insulin100-scientific-conference-draws-world-s-leading-diabetes-researchers">Insulin100 Scientific Symposium</a> that brought together the world’s leading diabetes researchers and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library mounted <a href="https://fisherdigitus.library.utoronto.ca/exhibits/show/insulin100/landing">an online exhibition</a> that highlights its collection of original documents relating to the history of insulin research.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">ֱ staff and faculty also contributed to the creation of <a href="/news/commemorative-stamp-marks-100th-anniversary-u-t-s-discovery-insulin">a commemorative stamp</a> and a <a href="/news/heritage-minute-showcases-life-saving-impact-u-t-s-insulin-discovery">Heritage Minute</a> paying tribute to the anniversary.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">The Royal Canadian Mint has issued two million coins with the insulin design in colour and another million without colour. The coins were designed by Jesse Koreck, an artist from Waterloo, Ont.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“This commemorative circulation coin is a heartfelt and enduring ‘thank you’ to the talented researchers behind a Canadian breakthrough that has saved millions of lives over the last 100 years, and continues to do so today,” Royal Canadian Mint President and CEO Marie Lemay said in a statement.</p> <h3><a href="https://insulin100.utoronto.ca">Read more about the discovery of insulin at ֱ&nbsp;</a></h3> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="media_embed" height="422px" width="750px"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="422px" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qy50j7I_HhQ" title="YouTube video player" width="750px"></iframe></div> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Tue, 13 Jul 2021 19:13:39 +0000 wangyana 169823 at Towards a cure: Insulin100 scientific conference draws world’s leading diabetes researchers /news/towards-cure-insulin100-scientific-conference-draws-world-s-leading-diabetes-researchers <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Towards a cure: Insulin100 scientific conference draws world’s leading diabetes researchers</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1027752634.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=-yWYU_3a 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-1027752634.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=2PZNjE0e 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-1027752634.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=DtSleoQK 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1027752634.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=-yWYU_3a" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-04-21T16:21:35-04:00" title="Wednesday, April 21, 2021 - 16:21" class="datetime">Wed, 04/21/2021 - 16:21</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">The Insulin100 Scientific Symposium drew diabetes experts from around the world to discuss research, patient perspectives and access to treatments (photo by Marian Vejcik via Getty Images) </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/yanan-wang" hreflang="en">Yanan Wang</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/diabetes" hreflang="en">Diabetes</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/global" hreflang="en">Global</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p style="margin-bottom:11px">Patient stories. Innovative diabetes therapies. A peek inside the bedroom of one of the scientists who discovered insulin at the University of Toronto.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Those were just a few highlights of ֱ’s recent <a href="https://insulin100.com/">Insulin100 Scientific Symposium</a>, which drew more than 6,000 attendees from around the world.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">The two-day scientific symposium commemorated the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin in a ֱ laboratory – and was preceded by <a href="https://www.deptmedicine.utoronto.ca/event/100-years-insulin-celebrating-its-impact-our-lives">a public celebration one day earlier</a> that featured stirring videos from diabetes patients across the globe who spoke about the role of insulin in their lives.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“I’m thankful for insulin because it allows me to keep playing tennis,” said one U.S. woman. “I am thankful for insulin because even though I’m diabetic, it still means I can eat great food,” said a man from the U.K. “I’m thankful for insulin because I can travel,” a woman from New Zealand said.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">In 1921, Ontario surgeon <b>Frederick Banting</b>, then-ֱ student <b>Charles Best</b> and ֱ alumnus <b>James Collip</b>, working under the direction of ֱ physiology professor <b>J.J.R. Macleod</b>, extracted the peptide hormone that revolutionized diabetes treatment, making the metabolic disease manageable through insulin.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Attendees at the public celebration also received an account – delivered by the curator of the Banting House in London, Ont. – of the moment Banting arrived at his world-changing idea in the middle of the night, complete with a photo of his wallpapered bedroom.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Yet, as Banting himself said during the lecture for his 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, insulin is not a cure.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">As a result, a major thrust of the scientific symposium focused on the innovative scientific research that will hopefully one day relegate a disease that affects 420 million globally to the dustbin of history.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><b><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/UofT86640_2020-11-01-Daniel%20Drucker%20%285%29.jpg" alt>Daniel Drucker </b>and <b>Gillian Hawker</b>, both professors in the <a href="https://facdir.deptmedicine.utoronto.ca/">department of medicine</a> in ֱ’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, kicked off the scientific symposium by moderating a panel with scientists from three major pharmaceutical companies engaged in diabetes research.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“What we are really looking forward to is to apply the powerful science that has become evident in the last few years to move beyond insulin toward a cure,” said Drucker, who is also a senior investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health and <a href="/news/u-t-scientist-receives-gairdner-international-award-metabolism-research?utm_source=UofTHome&amp;utm_medium=WebsiteBanner&amp;utm_content=UofTScientistReceivesGairdnerAward">a recent recipient of the Canada Gairdner International Award</a>.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“How are your companies going to potentially cure diabetes?”</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">The scientists – from Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi – proposed stem cell-based approaches and immunotherapies that are in their early stages of development. They also raised the possibility of screening and preventing type 1 diabetes before it manifests as a way to substantially reduce the incidences of disease.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">In the nearer term, conference attendees also spoke about the need to improve access to affordable insulin and other treatments for diabetes patients around the world, including in wealthy countries like the U.S.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“That’s unforgiveable, to have people take a suboptimal dose of insulin because they can’t afford the therapeutic dose,” <b>Bernard Zinman</b>, a professor in ֱ’s department of medicine and a senior scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, told symposium attendees.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Experts also noted that, because insulin is temperature-sensitive and has a short shelf life, maintaining supply in remote regions is particularly difficult. It can also be challenging to make new devices and other therapies available to resource-limited parts of the world, they said. &nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“The burdens and opportunities are different from country to country for people with diabetes,” said Dana Lewis, an insulin-dependent diabetic and University of Alabama alumna who created <a href="https://www.artificialpancreasbook.com/">an open-source artificial pancreas system</a> that automates micro-adjustments of insulin delivery to the body.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Jean%20Claude%20Mbanya%20courtesy%20of%20International%20Diabetes%20Federation_large_0.jpg" alt>The issue of equitable access was addressed in a presentation by Jean Claude Mbanya, a professor of medicine and endocrinology at the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. Mbanya outlined how the absence of government policies, mark-ups in the supply chain and the organization of diabetes management within health-care systems can all impact patient access to insulin.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">John Buse, the Verne S. Caviness Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, gave a presentation on the future of insulin management in type 2 diabetes. He pointed out that while insulin has higher efficacy than many of the alternative drugs now available for type 2 diabetes, it has also been associated with weight gain and hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“The landscape has changed, and insulin has gone from being the only therapy available for type 2 diabetes beyond lifestyle management, to one that has advantages and disadvantages,” said Buse, who directs the diabetes centre at his university and who won the 2019 American Diabetes Association Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Diabetes Research Award.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Other approaches, including GLP-1 therapies, have comparable efficacy to basal insulin without the same adverse effect of hypoglycemia, Buse said, declaring it a “tie” between the two treatments.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“Insulin therapy is often necessary, but rarely preferred in the setting of type 2 diabetes due to weight gain, hypoglycemia, general complexity of initiating and titrating therapy, and lack of clear-cut cardiovascular benefits,” he said.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><span id="cke_bm_391S" style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/utarmsIB_2001-77-132MS-crop.jpg" alt></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px"><em>The ֱ laboratory where insulin was discovered&nbsp;(photo courtesy of the University of Toronto Archives)</em></p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">James Shapiro, a professor at University of Alberta who was the first in Canada to start clinical trials with human embryonic-derived insulin-producing stem cell transplants, spoke on the future of pancreas and islet transplantation.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“Islet transplant has the capacity to cure diabetes,” Shapiro said.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Shapiro added, however, that the approach is currently limited by the number of cells that can be acquired from an organ donor and risks linked to the anti-rejection drugs required for a transplant –challenges he’s working on solving with other scientists and biotechnology companies.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“This is my firm belief: diabetes will become a thing of the past if all goes according to plan,” he said.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">In addition to the work of leading scientists in the field, the scientific symposium also recognized the work of trainees and early-career researchers who are making significant contributions to diabetes scholarship.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Awards were given to graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and early-career researchers studying diabetes. They included: Imperial College of London’s Steven Millership, Rebecca Cheung and Grazia Pizza; McMaster University’s Marie Pigeyre; <b>Aviroop Biswas</b>, an assistant professor at ֱ’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health; and <b>Saad Khan</b>, a&nbsp;ֱ doctoral student in immunology who studies links among the immune system, inflammation and obesity in metabolic diseases.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Drucker ended the symposium on a hopeful note by calling for a day when insulin therapy is no longer needed.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">“The science that I heard in the last two days gives me tremendous optimism,” he said. “Let’s try to eliminate type 1 diabetes, so there is no 125th anniversary.”</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Wed, 21 Apr 2021 20:21:35 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 169143 at Insulin 100: ֱ researchers work on novel drug therapies for diabetes, other illnesses /news/insulin-100-u-t-researchers-work-novel-drug-therapies-diabetes-other-illnesses <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Insulin 100: ֱ researchers work on novel drug therapies for diabetes, other illnesses</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/pharmacy%20group.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=x0jiH0Jn 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/pharmacy%20group.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=hqG6myu1 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/pharmacy%20group.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=KBGo2-jE 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/pharmacy%20group.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=x0jiH0Jn" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-04-16T17:09:09-04:00" title="Friday, April 16, 2021 - 17:09" class="datetime">Fri, 04/16/2021 - 17:09</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">From left to right: Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy researchers Stéphane Angers, Shana Kelley, Shirley Wu, Carolyn Cummins and Marisa Battistella.</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/eileen-hoftyzer" hreflang="en">Eileen Hoftyzer</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/diabetes" hreflang="en">Diabetes</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/leslie-dan-faculty-pharmacy" hreflang="en">Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>In the 100 years since <strong>Frederick Banting</strong> and <strong>Charles Best</strong> <a href="https://insulin100.utoronto.ca/">discovered insulin as a treatment for diabetes</a>, the process of&nbsp;drug discovery has changed radically – from&nbsp;lab equipment to&nbsp;techniques and technology.</p> <p>But&nbsp;pharmaceutical scientists’ drive to develop life-saving&nbsp;drugs remains as strong as ever.</p> <p>“Insulin is a phenomenal example of how important drug discoveries can change the lives of people all over the world,” says&nbsp;<strong>Lisa Dolovich</strong>, dean of the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.</p> <p>“We’re really proud to be working on therapeutic discovery and new diagnostics that we hope will also have significant impacts on people’s health and quality of life.”</p> <p>Whether focused on diabetes or other conditions, researchers at Leslie Dan&nbsp;are part of a culture of innovation and discovery inspired by Banting and Best that benefits from the faculty’s&nbsp;breadth of expertise and research approaches.</p> <p>“It provides new opportunities and new ways of thinking to infuse our different labs because people can learn from one another,” says Dolovich. “And, of course, we benefit from having students who have been educated in different areas, all coming together in pharmaceutical sciences.”</p> <p>Here are five&nbsp;researchers at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy who are pushing the boundaries when it comes to drug treatments for diabetes and other diseases:</p> <hr> <h4>Understanding mechanism of drug-induced diabetes may lead to new treatments</h4> <p>One of the first stages of drug discovery is understanding cellular pathways and what goes wrong in different conditions&nbsp;in order to find ways to counteract these effects.</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/03262018_Carolyn-Cummins_square.jpg" alt>“Part of my research is trying to discover new drug targets and then collaborating with chemists to make small molecules that we hope might eventually be turned into therapeutics,” says&nbsp;<strong>Carolyn Cummins</strong>, an associate professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. “This drug discovery research is central to the pharmaceutical sciences.”</p> <p>Cummins studies how glucocorticoids – stress hormones that are often prescribed as anti-inflammatory drugs – cause drug-induced diabetes. These drugs activate a receptor in the liver that stimulates the body to produce glucose, and, if they are taken chronically, predispose patients to conditions such as obesity and diabetes.</p> <p>Her work focuses on the nuclear receptors involved in the glucocorticoid signalling pathways. A better understanding of how these signalling pathways work and what happens when they are overstimulated may suggest new drug targets and a way to dose the anti-inflammatories to avoid this side effect.</p> <p>Although her work is at the early stages of drug discovery, she says her research is still informed and broadened by considering the patient perspective.</p> <p>“As pharmaceutical scientists, we have the capacity to learn about the patient perspective because we have access to front-line clinicians and pharmacists,” she says.</p> <h4>Clinical collaborations key to moving research forward</h4> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/9062headshot1-square.jpg" alt>Interacting and collaborating with clinicians is a key element of&nbsp;<strong>Shana Kelley’s</strong> research, enhancing her ability to make new breakthroughs and allowing her to see first-hand the challenges related to curing disease.&nbsp;</p> <p>“If you go to see a collaborator at a hospital, you cannot miss seeing the people who are there to receive care,” says Kelley, a <a href="https://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards-funding/university-professors/">University Professor</a>. “We have a very collaborative clinical community in Toronto, and it is such a huge resource for people like me, but it also keeps the patients top of mind.”</p> <p>Kelley and her team develop technologies that use molecular biology and nanotechnology to detect and diagnose disease&nbsp;– and look for drug targets in large volumes of sample&nbsp;– and they frequently collaborate with clinicians to access patient samples. Much of their work has focused on systems that scan large populations of cells to look for specific genetic sequences or mutations, which can be used for early detection of diseases such as cancer.</p> <p>Kelley’s team isn’t focused on a single disease. They apply their expertise to solve problems that apply to different types of conditions.</p> <p>“Pharmaceutical science is a broad field, and it’s very inclusive,” says Kelley. “In our faculty, we feel really strongly about solving critically important problems, and so it has a culture that lends itself to discovering new things and developing new technologies.”</p> <p>The focus on applying discoveries to solve problems is a particular&nbsp;strength of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, according to Dolovich.</p> <p>“We see beyond the boundaries of one medical area or one condition and look at these problems from the drug perspective or from the device perspective,” she says. “We can build on discoveries that have happened within the context of one medical condition [so it can be] considered for others.” &nbsp;</p> <h4>Drug delivery technologies for improving patient health</h4> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Shirley_Wu_7178-square.jpg" alt>Professor&nbsp;<strong>Shirley Wu</strong>&nbsp;and her team develop new drug delivery technologies to ensure drugs reach their intended targets in the body.</p> <p>The research is multidisciplinary and can be applied to many different diseases, so collaborations with experts in these diseases is essential.</p> <p>“A lot of work can’t be done with just one lab,” says Wu. “We have the technology to improve drug delivery, but we need other people’s expertise to understand the biology and assess what we develop.”</p> <p>Wu’s team has led work relating to a number of conditions, including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.</p> <p>To improve insulin therapy in diabetes, her team has studied intelligent insulin delivery over the last two decades. Recently, <a href="/news/developed-u-t-researchers-first-its-kind-skin-patch-aims-prevent-low-blood-sugar-diabetes">they developed&nbsp;a “smart” microneedle patch</a>&nbsp;to help people with diabetes manage hypoglycemia, a potentially dangerous complication of insulin therapy. The patch senses low blood sugar levels and, in response, automatically releases the hormone glucagon, which raises blood sugar levels. The non-invasive and painless device is currently in preclinical development.</p> <p>Wu says that her team approaches research with the intent to make a difference for patients.</p> <p>“We want to improve patient care, their health and their lives,” says Wu. “After we published the first paper on the microneedle patch, we received multiple emails from patients and relatives asking when and where we were going to run clinical trials. This is an in-demand treatment, which motivates us to work harder and faster toward clinical use.”</p> <h4>Advanced biologics may help treat complications of diabetes</h4> <p>When insulin was discovered 100 years ago, it was the world’s first biologic treatment that used a protein to treat disease. A century later, researchers at ֱ are also developing advanced biologics to help treat conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, an eye condition that can cause vision loss and&nbsp;blindness that affects about a third of people with diabetes.</p> <p>An impermeable physiological barrier in blood vessels around the eye – the blood-retina barrier – protects the eye from molecules circulating the body through the blood. But in diabetes, high blood sugar levels cause the barrier to “leak,” damaging the retina and causing blindness.</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Angers_8.21.19_square.jpg" alt>“Right now, there are limited drugs to treat diabetic retinopathy and they don’t work for everyone, so there’s an urgent need to develop other medications that could benefit patients,” says&nbsp;<strong>Stéphane Angers</strong>, professor and associate dean of research. “We’re developing a biologic that uses a completely different mechanism than the existing treatment, and our preclinical research shows that this biologic is very powerful for promoting barrier function.”</p> <p>Angers and his team developed an antibody that regulates a signalling pathway involved in blood-retina barrier function in order to strengthen the barrier. To help bring this biologic treatment to the clinic, he has launched a start-up company to complete the preclinical work, and he hopes that the drug will be ready to start clinical trials within a couple of years.</p> <p>“Our Toronto-led effort to develop a biologic for people with diabetic retinopathy follows the legacy of Banting and Best,” says Angers. “Being in a drug discovery ecosystem, we’re ideally positioned at the [Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy]&nbsp;to develop new drugs and translate our research into drug therapies.”</p> <h4>Clinical experience informs drug discovery process</h4> <p>Just as researchers aim to move discoveries into the clinic, clinician-scientists also bring their front-line perspectives back to drug discovery.</p> <p>“Because we have health professionals and students learning and working alongside those who are focused on scientific discovery, we can cross the bridge from drug discovery to health care,” says Dolovich. “It allows us to think about how new drug discoveries are going to impact patients and their care and the professionals who deliver that care. All that information feeds back into the drug discovery process.”</p> <p><strong><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Battistella_12.2.19_portrait_011-square.jpg" alt>Marisa Battistella</strong>&nbsp;is a pharmacist and clinician-scientist specializing in chronic kidney disease (CKD). “People with diabetes are at higher risk for other conditions, including CKD, and often take many different types of medication, which may result in drug interactions,” she says.</p> <p>Battistella’s research focuses on pharmacy practice, including using genomics to guide drug selection&nbsp;and optimizing patient medications, which may also include de-prescribing.</p> <p>She says having clinical and basic scientists working together helps to spur innovation in drug discovery.</p> <p>“Clinician-scientists and basic scientists are all trying to improve patient care – that’s our ultimate goal. Having these collaborations is really important and they can inform each other in ways to improve research and patient care,” she says. “I have the relationships at the hospital to roll out discoveries made in the lab, but we can also explain to researchers at the faculty how we translate research or clinical studies into practice.”</p> <p>Battistella is also active in education, not only as a course instructor and co-ordinator, but also serving as a preceptor and mentor. “Students often ask really good questions or they dig deeper into a particular disease or medication,” she says. “Their questioning minds help inform my thinking and help me to think deeply and consider ideas or research questions we could pursue.”</p> <p>With nearly four million Canadians living with diabetes and this number projected to grow over the coming years, ֱ students&nbsp;studying both pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences will play active roles in improving diabetes care in the future, says Dolovich.</p> <p>“We’re proud that we graduate pharmaceutical scientists and pharmacists who will be in a position to help people with diabetes, whether it’s in community pharmacy, in hospital, or research settings,” she says. “We do our best to prepare our students to take up the challenge and contribute as integral members of the health-care team.”</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 16 Apr 2021 21:09:09 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 169117 at Commemorative stamp marks 100th anniversary of ֱ’s discovery of insulin /news/commemorative-stamp-marks-100th-anniversary-u-t-s-discovery-insulin <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Commemorative stamp marks 100th anniversary of ֱ’s discovery of insulin</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Insulin%201921-2021%20Stamp%20400P.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=q0B2QjX8 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/Insulin%201921-2021%20Stamp%20400P.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=mUT3PPHD 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/Insulin%201921-2021%20Stamp%20400P.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Yg7PJutE 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Insulin%201921-2021%20Stamp%20400P.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=q0B2QjX8" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-04-15T10:25:09-04:00" title="Thursday, April 15, 2021 - 10:25" class="datetime">Thu, 04/15/2021 - 10:25</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Canada Post unveiled the new stamp at an online symposium sponsored by Diabetes Action Canada, ֱ’s Banting &amp; Best Diabetes Centre and the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/geoffrey-vendeville" hreflang="en">Geoffrey Vendeville</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/banting-best" hreflang="en">Banting &amp; Best</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/diabetes" hreflang="en">Diabetes</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/physiology" hreflang="en">Physiology</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Among the treasures in the University of Toronto’s archives are letters from grateful diabetic patients and their families addressed to <b>Frederick Banting</b>, who, along with <b>Charles Best</b>, <b>J. J. R.</b> <b>Macleod</b> and <b>James Collip</b>,<b> </b>discovered the role of insulin in the disease.</p> <p>So, it’s fitting that this year’s celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the medical breakthrough at ֱ include a new Canada Post stamp.</p> <p>The stamp, unveiled this week&nbsp;at&nbsp;a virtual celebration held by&nbsp;Diabetes Action Canada, ֱ’s Banting &amp; Best Diabetes Centre and the department of medicine, features an excerpt from Banting's unpublished memoir and an original insulin bottle with a red cap.</p> <p>ֱ researchers<b> Scott Heximer</b> and <b>Patricia Brubaker</b> worked with Canada Post and Banting House to ensure the stamp’s historical accuracy and help source archival material.</p> <p>“When we got into this, we didn’t realize everything that went into making a stamp,” says Heximer, an associate professor and chair of the department of physiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.</p> <p>In addition to the stamp itself, the unveiling includes <a href="https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/shop/collectors/official-first-day-covers.jsf;CPO_JSESSIONID=LdnLa2wk_RjaQCDynWyVmo1yIycYsZMpIee3_Zq8L65tN-DQ8-cW!549531853?execution=e1s1">an official first day</a> cover that also required fact-checking.</p> <p>“It was fun,” says Heximer. “Our local committee was sitting around looking at pictures of Banting and letters addressed to the doctors in Toronto, and these were all things that went into building this official first day cover.”</p> <p>One hundred years ago, Banting – a surgeon with a struggling practice in London, Ont. and little research experience –&nbsp;approached Macleod in ֱ’s department of physiology in search of the support and equipment necessary to carry out his experiments. Macleod offered Best, who had recently graduated with a degree in physiology and biochemistry, the opportunity to work with Banting. Together with Collip, a biochemist on sabbatical from the University of Alberta, the researchers succeeded in producing a pancreatic extract from cattle that prevented death from diabetes.</p> <p>Brubaker, a professor in the departments of physiology and medicine, notes that the influence of Banting, Best, Collip and Macleod can still be felt in the department of physiology. For example, she says, Best was chair of the department when Professor Emeritus <b>Mladen Vranic</b> was hired.</p> <p>Vranic, in turn, hired Brubaker, who <a href="https://physiology.utoronto.ca/news/professor-patricia-brubaker-wins-diabetes-canada-lifetime-achievement-award">won a lifetime achievement award from Diabetes Canada last year</a> and <a href="/news/our-very-first-biotech-win-how-u-t-s-discovery-insulin-made-it-research-and-innovation">whose research has contributed to the development of drug treatments for patients with type-2 diabetes</a>. The drugs work by stimulating the secretion of insulin, helping to lower blood sugar levels and reduce appetite, among other effects.</p> <p>In 1923, Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Banting was the first Canadian to win a Nobel and remains the youngest winner of the prize in physiology or medicine (he was 32). Banting and Macleod shared the prize with Best and Collip.</p> <p>The discovery of insulin was such a monumental achievement that a stadium full of people listened to Banting discuss the research, according to Brubaker.</p> <p>“It was considered not a cure for diabetes, but a cure for death due to diabetes,” says Brubaker, who lives with type 1 diabetes herself and has devoted much of her career to understanding the disease. “Type 1 diabetes was a death sentence – a slow, prolonged, painful death – and it affected mostly children.”</p> <p>The announcement of a lifesaving treatment was especially welcome news after the end of the First World War and a global pandemic that, like today’s, killed millions.</p> <p>“This was an exciting ray of sunshine,” Brubaker says.</p> <p>In March 1922, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/once-upon-a-city-archives/2016/01/14/once-upon-a-city-discovering-insulin-was-banting-at-his-best.html?rf">a </a><a href="https://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/once-upon-a-city-archives/2016/01/14/once-upon-a-city-discovering-insulin-was-banting-at-his-best.html?rf"><i>Toronto Star</i></a><a href="https://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/once-upon-a-city-archives/2016/01/14/once-upon-a-city-discovering-insulin-was-banting-at-his-best.html?rf"> bold-face headline proclaimed</a>: “Toronto Doctors on Track of Diabetes Cure.”</p> <p>Soon, fan mail poured in for Banting and his colleagues.</p> <p><a href="https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AP10037">Teddy Ryder</a>, a five-year-old diabetic admitted to hospital weighing just 26 pounds, received his first insulin shots in January 1922. The next year, <a href="https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AL10021">he wrote a letter to Banting</a> in sprawling capital letters that filled the page. It said: “I wish you could come to see me. I am a fat boy now and I feel fine. I can climb a tree.”</p> <p>Canada has issued stamps since 1851, though most early examples featured English royalty, according to Jim Phillips, director of stamp services at Canada Post. Since then, Leonard Cohen, Alexander Graham Bell and Viola Desmond are among those whose images have graced the tiny squares.</p> <p>As for Banting, he was last featured on a <a href="https://www.arpinphilately.com/itm/canada-stamp-1822a-sir-frederic-banting-insulin-46-2000">Canada Post stamp in 2000</a>.</p> <p>“We see ourselves among the oldest Canadian storytellers,” Phillips said, adding that the discovery of insulin is a “fantastic story” for a stamp.</p> <p>“These are real heroes, these four guys, and the University of Toronto for backing them and giving them space for their research ... This is a very, very positive story –&nbsp;and I think we need positive stories more than ever right now.”</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="media_embed" height="422px" width="750px"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="422px" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m4WzO3BYPYs" title="YouTube video player" width="750px"></iframe></div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 15 Apr 2021 14:25:09 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 169076 at Insulin 100: How the road to a diabetes cure is yielding better treatments /news/insulin-100-how-road-diabetes-cure-yielding-better-treatments <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Insulin 100: How the road to a diabetes cure is yielding better treatments</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1282415778.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=1uwcHIMy 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-1282415778.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=8Z3pDc4b 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-1282415778.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=0zFZK2fE 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1282415778.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=1uwcHIMy" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-04-01T11:09:30-04:00" title="Thursday, April 1, 2021 - 11:09" class="datetime">Thu, 04/01/2021 - 11:09</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(Photo by Getty Images/iStockphoto)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/jim-oldfield" hreflang="en">Jim Oldfield</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/institute-biomedical-engineering" hreflang="en">Institute of Biomedical Engineering</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/banting-best" hreflang="en">Banting &amp; Best</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/diabetes" hreflang="en">Diabetes</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-applied-science-engineering" hreflang="en">Faculty of Applied Science &amp; Engineering</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/nutritional-sciences" hreflang="en">Nutritional Sciences</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/physiology" hreflang="en">Physiology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/university-health-network" hreflang="en">University Health Network</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“The pancreas,” says&nbsp;<strong>Gary Lewis</strong>, an endocrinologist at Toronto General Hospital and director of the Banting &amp; Best Diabetes Centre at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, “is like an exquisitely sensitive and perfectly networked computer.”</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Second by second,&nbsp;he notes,&nbsp;the pancreas&nbsp;secretes&nbsp;just the right amount of&nbsp;insulin&nbsp;or glucagon&nbsp;to&nbsp;lower or raise&nbsp;blood sugar&nbsp;into&nbsp;the&nbsp;portal vein&nbsp;that leads&nbsp;directly&nbsp;to the liver, the site of key metabolic processes. Insulin is then distributed&nbsp;to every tissue in the body via general circulation.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px"><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Lewis%20portrait300.jpg" alt>“Insulin injections are life-saving, but administered under the skin and nowhere near as precise,” says Lewis, who is also a scientist and professor in the department of&nbsp;physiology and <a href="https://www.deptmedicine.utoronto.ca/">department of medicine</a> at ֱ. “It’s extraordinarily difficult to mimic the function of a healthy pancreas.”</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">&nbsp;</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">That’s one reason a cure for diabetes has proven elusive 100 years after the discovery of insulin.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Another big reason is the complexity of how the disease arises. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas, creating a life-threatening spike in blood sugar. Type 2 diabetes usually comes on more slowly, as the body becomes resistant to insulin or the pancreas can’t produce enough of it.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Genetics play a role in both types. Exposure to viruses and other environmental effects may be a factor in type 1. Lifestyle factors, including weight gain and physical inactivity, are strongly linked to type 2.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">The bottom line, says Lewis, is that diabetes is a multifactoral disease, and we’re not close to a cure.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Ask about treatments, though, and Lewis gets excited.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">The last two decades have brought a plethora of clinical and research advances, from new drugs to boost and sensitize the body to insulin and promote weight loss, to lifestyle interventions that improve diet, continuous monitoring of blood sugar, long- and short-lasting insulin, better insulin pumps, pancreatic transplants&nbsp;and pre-clinical stem cell and immunosuppressive therapies.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“Progress on treatments has been fantastic, especially for type 2,” Lewis says. “I’m very, very hopeful.”</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">The distinction between treatment and cure in medicine is often unclear. And for the 3.6 million Canadians living with diabetes, the distinction matters less and less&nbsp;if the goal is a full and healthy life.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90 per cent of diabetes cases in Canada. Prevalence is rising, but Canadians with type 2 diabetes are living longer and have fewer diabetes-related complications.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“The clinic doesn’t look like it did 30 years ago,” says Lewis, who mainly treats patients with type 2. “We see fewer amputees, less blindness. Patients are generally healthier, and their prognosis is often excellent if they maintain their blood sugar target and other key parameters.”</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Weight loss is a cornerstone of treatments to lower blood sugar, and recent research has strengthened the link between weight reduction and type 2 diabetes management. Some people with type 2 can lose weight and control blood sugar through dietary changes and exercise alone.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Bariatric surgery is very effective for weight loss and often results in diabetes remission, although it comes with surgical risks and is expensive.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“If we could prevent obesity, we could greatly reduce the incidence of type 2,” Lewis says. “And experiments have shown we&nbsp;can get a remission with&nbsp;lifestyle changes, so we know what works.”</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">The problem is broad implementation.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“I’ve tried to lose weight and I know how difficult it can be, especially in an environment of convenient and inexpensive calories,” Lewis says. Moreover, factors such as income, education, ethnicity, access to healthy food and living conditions can make lifestyle changes that curb obesity nearly impossible.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“Social determinants of health are overwhelmingly the most important influence on who gets type 2 diabetes, and how well or poorly they do with it,” Lewis says.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Fortunately, dozens of new drugs for diabetes have hit the market in the last two decades.&nbsp;</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px"><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/jacqueline-beaudry-crop.jpg" alt>Medications for weight loss round out the armamentarium, and some also protect against kidney damage and lower cardiac risk. Current therapies can reduce body weight up to 10 per cent, although a loss of 20 per cent or more would have a greater effect on outcomes for patients with type 2 diabetes, says&nbsp;<strong>Jacqueline Beaudry</strong>, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at ֱ who studies links between obesity, hormones and diet.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Beaudry is probing the biology that underpins these medications, including the gut hormones GLP-1 and GIP. They control blood glucose and reduce appetite, but scientists are unsure how.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“If we could understand their mechanisms of action, we could design better drugs,” Beaudry says.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">For people with type 1 diabetes, continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps and even automated “closed-loop”&nbsp;systems that run on mobile apps to deliver insulin as-needed have radically changed the patient experience.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px"><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/casconcelos-nostro-750x500.jpg" alt></p> <p><span id="cke_bm_372S" style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span><em>Sara Vasconcelos left),&nbsp;an assistant professor at ֱ’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, has worked with&nbsp;<strong>Cristina Nostro </strong>(right), an associate professor in the department of physiology,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>and her team in the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at UHN&nbsp;to extend the survival and functionality of pancreatic precursor cells generated&nbsp;from human stem cells.&nbsp;</em></p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Cell therapy could prove more liberating still.<br> <br> University labs and biotechs are working on implantable devices that house insulin-producing cells derived from stem cells.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">To that end,&nbsp;<strong>Cristina Nostro</strong>, an associate professor in the department of physiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>and her team in the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at University Health Network recently discovered a more efficient way to generate and purify pancreatic precursor cells from human stem cells in the lab.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">They have also found a way to vascularize those cells by working with&nbsp;<strong>Sara Vasconcelos</strong>, an assistant professor at ֱ’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Together, they have extended the survival and functionality of the cells in animal models of diabetes.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">The biggest problem with these therapies is that the immune system rejects them. The same challenge currently hinders pancreas and islet transplants.&nbsp;</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">“The immune system is an amazing machine, we’re lucky&nbsp;it’s so good,” says Nostro. “But it’s very difficult to control when it goes awry, as in autoimmune conditions.”</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Nostro is working with immunologists at the university on a method to protect insulin-producing beta cells from immune rejection, and she says many researchers in the field are now focused on immune-protective approaches.</p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">Another strategy for type 1 diabetes is to tamp down the autoimmune response before the disease progresses. The idea is to prevent immune cells that damage the pancreas while the body still produces beta cells.</p> <p class="has-black-color">“Groups around the world are bringing different ideas and creative approaches to treat type 1 diabetes, that’s the beauty of science,” says Nostro. “I am very hopeful about what the future holds. Who knows? Maybe we will see hybrid technologies combining a pump and cells. We have to keep an open mind.”</p> <p class="has-black-color"><i>This story was originally published in ֱ Med Magazine’s </i><a href="https://uoftmedmagazine.utoronto.ca/2021-winter/"><i>Insulin Issue</i></a><i>.</i></p> <p class="has-black-color" style="margin-bottom:17px">&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 01 Apr 2021 15:09:30 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 168957 at 'The future Bantings and Bests': How insulin's discovery at ֱ is fuelling research 100 years later /news/future-bantings-and-bests-how-insulin-s-discovery-u-t-fuelling-research-100-years-later <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">'The future Bantings and Bests': How insulin's discovery at ֱ is fuelling research 100 years later</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-924527484.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=sYO-xVdh 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-924527484.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=TBkssfJR 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-924527484.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=n7V8wNOY 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-924527484.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=sYO-xVdh" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-03-19T11:44:14-04:00" title="Friday, March 19, 2021 - 11:44" class="datetime">Fri, 03/19/2021 - 11:44</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">ֱ's Janet Rossant, pictured here in her SickKids lab, says a $25,000 grant from the Banting Research Foundation was a key moment early in her career (photo by Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/paul-fraumeni" hreflang="en">Paul Fraumeni</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/donnelly-centre-cellular-biomolecular-research" hreflang="en">Donnelly Centre for Cellular &amp; Biomolecular Research</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/banting-best" hreflang="en">Banting &amp; Best</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/biochemistry" hreflang="en">Biochemistry</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/hospital-sick-children" hreflang="en">Hospital for Sick Children</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/molecular-genetics" hreflang="en">Molecular Genetics</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>It was 1983 and&nbsp;<strong>Janet Rossant</strong>&nbsp;was 33 years old.&nbsp;</p> <p>Six years earlier, she left her native England with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. She had landed a position at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.&nbsp;– across the lake from Toronto. &nbsp;</p> <p>Then an assistant professor of biology, Rossant headed a laboratory team seeking to understand how the embryo develops. To do that, the Rossant team was starting to develop transgenic mice.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>“This was a new field of developmental biology, and we were excited by the possibility of being able to add genes to embryos and study their effect on development. But to do this research, we needed specialized equipment and we also needed the money to buy it,” says Rossant, who has been a researcher at the University of Toronto for the past 36 years.</p> <p>So, Rossant applied to the Banting Research Foundation (BRF), which awarded her $25,000 – not a huge amount, but an important influx of financing for a researcher who was starting to build a track record.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>“People like to talk about the tipping point,” she says. “When you’re a young investigator and you don’t have a lot of funding, it’s hard to move to the next level. So, the Banting Foundation was then, and&nbsp;still is, a really important support for new investigators, providing that critical piece of funding just when you need it.”</p> <p>That early support paid off for Rossant – and for global society.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>By 1985, Rossant had moved to ֱ&nbsp;and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute (known today as the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute) at Mount Sinai Hospital.<br> <br> Over the next 30 years, Rossant&nbsp;conducted research&nbsp;on genetics and stem cells that earned her renown and a bevy of awards. Today, Rossant is a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.provost.utoronto.ca/awards-funding/university-professors/">University Professor</a>&nbsp;in the department of molecular genetics at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, a senior scientist and chief of research emeritus at the Hospital for Sick Children and&nbsp;the president and scientific director of the Gairdner Foundation.</p> <p>It’s an impressive&nbsp;career arc that, in many ways, can be traced to the discovery of insulin at ֱ decades earlier.</p> <p>In 1921, sixty-three years before Rossant applied for that $25,000 fateful grant, an unlikely team was hard at work in a ֱ lab on a disease – diabetes – that had killed millions over the centuries and continued to bewilder scientists.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Frederick Banting</strong>, a physician with little research experience, and <strong>Charles Best</strong>, a medical student, were investigating Banting’s plan&nbsp;to isolate the mysterious secretion of the pancreas that controlled metabolism.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>J.J.R. Macleod</strong>, then ֱ’s chair of physiology, somewhat reluctantly gave the team lab space, equipment and dogs to use for testing.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Banting’s idea worked.&nbsp;</p> <p>The discovery won the Nobel Prize in 1923 and continues to enable people with type 1 diabetes to live full, rich lives –&nbsp;once an&nbsp;unthinkable outcome.&nbsp;But the legacy of insulin’s discovery goes well beyond diabetes by acting as a&nbsp;catalyst to stimulate a century of medical research in a dizzying array of areas.<br> <br> For one thing,&nbsp;two research-supporting foundations were established in the spirit of Banting and Best, including the BRF.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Our mission is to fund young investigators, the future Bantings and Bests, in the way they were funded by Macleod, at the beginnings of their careers when they have a bold idea that just might move society forward,” says&nbsp;<strong>Catharine Whiteside</strong>, BRF chair, former dean of medicine and an emerita professor with the department of medicine.&nbsp;</p> <p>In 1960, W. Garfield Weston Foundation funding established the Dr. Charles H. Best Foundation. The original idea was to support research at the discretion of Best, who went on to conduct important studies in a number of areas and become a ֱ research leader.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>When Best retired in 1965, the funds were designated to ֱ’s Banting and Best department of medical research. That unit later became part of the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.</p> <p>“Today, those funds are used to support researchers getting started on their careers through a program called the Dr. Charles H. Best Postdoctoral Fellows,” says&nbsp;<strong>Peter Lewis</strong>, the program’s board chair and former chair of the department of biochemistry at ֱ. “This funding enables us to help researchers of a high calibre from around the world to pursue their ideas and to learn with the scientists of the Donnelly.”</p> <p>These two foundations have helped launch&nbsp;remarkable careers.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>“The influence of Banting and Best goes way beyond diabetes and insulin,” says Professor&nbsp;<strong>Reinhart Reithmeier</strong>, also a former chair of the department of biochemistry who was a winner of a Best Postdoctoral Fellowship&nbsp;in the late 1970s.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>The Toronto insulin discovery continues to ignite important ideas from newer generations.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>At the Donnelly Centre, the 2019 Best Postdoctoral Fellow&nbsp;<strong>Juline Poirson</strong>&nbsp;is studying the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). It is critical in ensuring the normal functioning of cells, notably by destroying proteins that are no longer needed. But in diseases such as cancer, the UPS is dysregulated.&nbsp;</p> <p>Poirson is working to understand why this happens with certain proteins. Her work could lead to important drug developments to treat diseases like cancer.&nbsp;</p> <p>“I came from France to the Donnelly because I knew it would help me build on what I had already learned,” she says. “It is one of the best research centres in the world when you work on protein-protein interaction. This experience is going to help me for the rest of my career.”&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Nomazulu Dlamini</strong>&nbsp;is an associate professor of pediatrics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a staff physician at SickKids Hospital. The pediatric neurologist and scientist specializes in understanding and treating strokes in children.&nbsp;Her focus is dystonia, a disabling and painful disorder that can occur in children who have experienced a stroke. It’s characterized by involuntary, repetitive muscle contractions, twisting movements and abnormal posturing. Often, it is resistant to treatment.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>It is thought that the problem originates in the basal ganglia, a network in the brain. Dlamini’s lab is studying the differences in the neural network between childhood stroke patients who have dystonia and those who don’t. Understanding why some children experience dystonia will increase the potential of developing effective therapies.</p> <p>The BRF awarded Dlamini $25,000 in 2018 to support her work in understanding dystonia.&nbsp;</p> <p>“That support has been very helpful. With the pilot data from the work we have been able to get because of the Banting funding, we’ve been able to leverage that for further funding,” says Dlamini.</p> <p>“That’s all because Banting believed in our idea of discovering why there is this difference between these two groups of children.”</p> <p><em>This story, which has been edited and condensed, was originally published in ֱ Med Magazine’s </em><a href="https://uoftmedmagazine.utoronto.ca/2021-winter/"><em>Insulin Issue</em></a><em>.</em><br> &nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 19 Mar 2021 15:44:14 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 168795 at PBS Newshour commemorates ֱ’s Charles Best, of insulin fame /news/pbs-newshour-commemorates-u-t-s-charles-best-insulin-fame <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">PBS Newshour commemorates ֱ’s Charles Best, of insulin fame</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-2638358-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=INihNulP 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-2638358-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=kFQ33ycA 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-2638358-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=_0x_z6pI 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-2638358-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=INihNulP" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>wangyana</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-03-05T15:35:24-05:00" title="Friday, March 5, 2021 - 15:35" class="datetime">Fri, 03/05/2021 - 15:35</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">(Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin-100" hreflang="en">Insulin 100</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/banting-best" hreflang="en">Banting &amp; Best</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/biochemistry" hreflang="en">Biochemistry</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/charles-best" hreflang="en">Charles Best</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/frederick-banting" hreflang="en">Frederick Banting</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The life of University of Toronto’s <strong>Charles Best,</strong> who helped discover insulin, was recently commemorated in a&nbsp;<em><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-a-medical-student-helped-discover-lifesaving-insulin">PBS Newshour column</a></em> in honour of Best’s birthday last month.</p> <p>The piece recounts the story of how a winning coin toss gave Best the opportunity to work with Ontario surgeon <strong>Frederick Banting</strong> in a ֱ laboratory. Best was only 21 years old and still a&nbsp;student at ֱ at the time.</p> <p>“The entire hot, sticky summer of 1921, Banting and Best toiled in a tiny, smelly laboratory, gathering their data,” <em>PBS Newshour </em>writes.</p> <p>With the help of two other scientists, ֱ graduate <strong>James Collip </strong>and <strong>J.J.R. Macleod</strong>, a ֱ professor of biochemistry, Banting and Best isolated the pancreatic hormone, now known as insulin, that paved the way to lifesaving treatments for diabetes patients around the world, the column says.</p> <p>It goes on to detail how, in 1922, a 14-year-old boy with end-stage juvenile diabetes became the first human to be treated with – and eventually saved by – insulin. While only Banting and Macleod were awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine&nbsp;for the breakthrough,&nbsp;the column notes that Banting and Macleod shared their prize money with Best and Collip.</p> <p>Insulin became “one of the most successful drugs of the 20th century,” <em>PBS Newshour </em>says.</p> <h3><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-a-medical-student-helped-discover-lifesaving-insulin">Read more about Charles Best in <em>PBS Newshour</em></a></h3> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 05 Mar 2021 20:35:24 +0000 wangyana 168632 at Short exercise 'snacks' improve blood sugar regulation after meals, ֱ study finds /news/short-exercise-snacks-improve-blood-sugar-regulation-after-meals-u-t-study-finds <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Short exercise 'snacks' improve blood sugar regulation after meals, ֱ study finds</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/iStock-1042650372.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=b4IaB_Mx 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/iStock-1042650372.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=811JvjfM 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/iStock-1042650372.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Ae2XLQC- 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/iStock-1042650372.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=b4IaB_Mx" alt> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2020-12-10T09:19:41-05:00" title="Thursday, December 10, 2020 - 09:19" class="datetime">Thu, 12/10/2020 - 09:19</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">A study by researchers in ֱ's Faculty of Kinesiology and the Temerty&nbsp;Faculty of Medicine suggest brief bouts of chair stands or treadmill walking can reduce increases in post-meal insulin induced by too much sitting (photo by Andrey Popov)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/jelena-damjanovic" hreflang="en">Jelena Damjanovic</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-kinesiology-physical-education" hreflang="en">Faculty of Kinesiology &amp; Physical Education</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Whether you’re working from home or an office, the modern workday often involves spending hours&nbsp;sitting in front of a&nbsp;computer screen.</p> <p>Not surprisingly, there’s a cost to such&nbsp;sedentary behaviour.</p> <p>“Periods of prolonged sitting can be associated with elevated increases in the concentration of blood insulin, a hormone that regulates our blood sugar concentration following meals,” says&nbsp;<strong>Jenna Gillen</strong>, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology &amp; Physical Education (KPE).</p> <p>“While increased insulin following a meal is normal, exaggerated spikes in the hormone can be an early sign of risk for metabolic diseases, like type 2 diabetes, as it suggests the body is working harder to lower blood sugar concentration after meals.”&nbsp;</p> <p>The good news is, we can do something about it and it involves snacking – on exercise.&nbsp;</p> <p>Gillen worked with a team of researchers from KPE and the Temerty&nbsp;Faculty of Medicine to investigate whether breaking up periods of prolonged sitting with short exercise “snacks” could improve blood sugar regulation throughout the day in men and women. <a href="https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/japplphysiol.00796.2020">Recently published in the&nbsp;<em>Journal of Applied Physiology</em></a>, their findings suggest that interrupting sitting with brief bouts of repeated chair stands or treadmill walking can reduce increases in post-meal insulin induced by too much sitting.</p> <p>The study found that interrupting eight hours of prolonged sitting every 30 minutes with one minute of repeated chair stands or two minutes of treadmill walks lowered insulin concentrations following lunch. Short walks have previously been shown to be effective, but this was the first study to demonstrate that body-weight resistance exercise, such as the repeated chair stands, are just as effective for improving glycemic control in adults who engage in prolonged periods of sitting, but are otherwise healthy.&nbsp;</p> <p>“Importantly, repeated chair stands require no equipment or space beyond one’s sedentary area and may represent a practical strategy for mitigating cardiometabolic disease risk associated with prolonged periods of sitting,” says Gillen. “These findings are especially timely now when many individuals are looking for physical activity strategies that can be performed at home without the need for additional space or equipment.”</p> <p>However, the researchers did not see a reduction in blood sugar concentrations throughout the day in response to the exercise snacks. This was surprising because studies in adults with obesity and/or impaired blood sugar regulation seen in type 2 diabetes have demonstrated that exercise snacks can lower post-meal spikes in blood sugar concentration. Gillen believes the explanation may lie in the fact that the participants of this study were relatively healthy with normal blood sugar concentrations.</p> <p>“What this suggests is that exercise snacks in adults who engage in prolonged periods of sitting, but are otherwise healthy, are more likely to reduce the amount of insulin required to control blood sugar following a meal,” she says.&nbsp;</p> <p>Gillen emphasizes that, while exercise snacks are beneficial to anyone who spends a lot of time sitting during the day, they should not be interpreted as a replacement for daily moderate-to-vigorous&nbsp;physical activity.&nbsp;</p> <p>“That’s still very important,” she says.</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 10 Dec 2020 14:19:41 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 167786 at Virtual symposium celebrates ֱ’s discovery of insulin, looks to future of diabetes research /news/virtual-symposium-celebrates-u-t-s-discovery-insulin-looks-future-diabetes-research <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Virtual symposium celebrates ֱ’s discovery of insulin, looks to future of diabetes research</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1184019355.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=uG2tb2q1 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-1184019355.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Cq7NUY11 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-1184019355.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=6bpn1ONC 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1184019355.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=uG2tb2q1" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2020-11-30T17:03:15-05:00" title="Monday, November 30, 2020 - 17:03" class="datetime">Mon, 11/30/2020 - 17:03</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Researchers and scholars discussed everything from the latest diabetes research to the socio-economic aspects of the disease at an online symposium presented by ֱ (photo by vitapix via Getty Images)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/geoffrey-vendeville" hreflang="en">Geoffrey Vendeville</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/institute-health-policy-management-and-evaluation" hreflang="en">Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/alumni" hreflang="en">ֱ</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/insulin" hreflang="en">Insulin</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/meric-gertler" hreflang="en">Meric Gertler</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes amounted to a death sentence.&nbsp;</p> <p>Newspapers at the time circulated black-and-white pictures of emaciated diabetic children with little recourse except a “starvation diet” that was meant to prolong their life.</p> <p>After the University of Toronto’s <strong>Frederick Banting</strong>, <strong>Charles Best</strong>, <strong>J.J.R MacLeod </strong>and <strong>James Collip</strong>, pioneered the use of insulin as an effective treatment for diabetes in the early 1920s, the discoverers sold their patent rights to ֱ for $1 apiece.</p> <p>“Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world,” Banting declared.</p> <p>ֱ recently hosted a symposium titled “The Legacy of Insulin Discovery: Origins, Access and Translation,” a virtual event that involved contemporary researchers, scholars and others with an interest in diabetes discuss insulin’s impact and current challenges.</p> <p>That included equitable treatment and mitigating the impact on marginalized people – very much in keeping with the motivation of insulin’s discoverers, who practically gave away their patent rights.</p> <p>In a message to open the symposium, ֱ President <strong>Meric Gertler</strong> noted that the discovery of insulin has saved the lives of millions around the world, but that diabetes remains a leading cause of death, disease and disability – one that is on the rise in low- and middle-income countries.</p> <p>“Clearly, there is still a great deal to be done to prevent and treat and maybe one day to cure diabetes, but we have many reasons to hope,” he said.</p> <p>“The story of insulin is a brilliant example of the power of collaboration demonstrating how a university, its hospital partners and a pharmaceutical company could work together and change the world.”</p> <p><a href="https://insulin100.utoronto.ca/">The symposium was the first in a series of events hosted by ֱ to mark the centennial of the discovery of insulin</a> – an event described by the late ֱ historian <strong>Michael Bliss </strong>as “one of the genuine miracles of modern medicine.” The event was part of this year’s <a href="https://rsc-src.ca/en/events/coee2020">Celebration of Excellence and Engagement</a>, a week-long exploration of scholarly, scientific and artistic topics presented by ֱ and the Royal Society of Canada.</p> <p>From patient perspectives to public health challenges, the symposium drew a line from insulin’s discovery 100 years ago through the present and into the future. That included a session on innovation and commercialization that featured insights from ֱ’s <strong>Paul Santerre</strong>, <strong>Shana Kelley</strong> and <strong>Daniel Drucker</strong>. <strong>Alex Mihailidis</strong>, ֱ’s associate vice-president, international partnerships, moderated a panel on digital health technologies.</p> <p><strong>Patricia Brubaker,</strong> a professor in the departments of physiology and medicine in the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a member of the faculty’s Banting &amp; Best Diabetes Centre, was also among the experts from universities and hospitals across the country who spoke at the event. An expert on the gut hormones GLP-1 and GLP-2, Brubaker says our improved understanding of GLP-1 has led to the development of drugs that can mimic the actions of the hormone, which is naturally secreted by the intestine and helps produce more insulin to keep blood sugar levels in check. It has also led to the advent of DPP-4 inhibitors, a class of prescription medicines that slow the inactivation and degradation of GLP-1, making it last longer in the body.</p> <p>“The long-term goal is that, if we can promote higher release of GLP-1 into the bloodstream and then maybe combine that with the DPP-4 inhibitors, we might end up with a better combination therapy,” Brubaker <a href="/news/our-very-first-biotech-win-how-u-t-s-discovery-insulin-made-it-research-and-innovation">recently told <em>ֱ News</em></a>.</p> <p>Like many of her colleagues in the field, Brubaker stressed the importance of focusing on diabetes prevention as well as new or improved treatments.</p> <p>“Diabetes prevention science is going to be all about how we can predict the onset of diabetes, which is great,” she said. “But if we know someone’s going to develop diabetes, how do we prevent it? That’s still an area of intense investigation.”</p> <p>Many of Thursday’s speakers touched on that theme, sharing their insights on the environmental factors, or social determinants of health, linked to Type 2 diabetes.</p> <p><strong>Gillian Booth</strong>, a professor in the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, shared the results of her research, as well as that of others, that looked at how elements such as urban design, air pollution and food availability can influence one’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Using provincial health records and other data, Booth and her team found startling health differences between more and less walkable neighbourhoods.</p> <p><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2524191">In one 2016 study</a> of nearly 9,000 neighbourhoods in southwestern Ontario, for example, she and her colleagues found that neighbourhoods “characterized by more walkable urban design were associated with a stable prevalence of overweight and obesity and declining diabetes incidence during a 12-year period.”</p> <p>“The only factor that we found that seemed to be explaining these findings were differences in transportation choices,” she said at the symposium. “People in the most walkable area had a much higher rate of walking and cycling, more trips per capita on public transit, and far lower numbers of car trips per capita than those living in less walkable areas.”</p> <p>In another paper cited by Booth, one of her former PhD students<strong> Jane Polsky </strong>– now a health researcher at Statistics Canada – and her co-authors found a link between diabetes and living near a “fast food swamp,” an area with many fast food restaurants and few healthy alternatives.</p> <p>Their research found that in areas close to fast food restaurants the rate of obesity, diabetes and hypertension increased one-and-a-half to two-fold.</p> <p>Continuing on the same theme, David Campbell, an assistant professor at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, stressed the need for an approach to diabetes that addresses the social determinants of health and the gap in health outcomes between people of different backgrounds and socioeconomic status.</p> <p>While landmark events such as the discovery of insulin are “our discipline’s legacy,” he said, improving diabetes outcomes with social interventions is “the next frontier.”</p> <p>He cited research suggesting that Albertans who receive income support were four times as likely to require hospitalization for diabetes, while Indigenous Peoples were five times as likely.</p> <p>Campbell has also conducted qualitative studies exploring the impact of diabetes on people experiencing homelessness and the difficulties they face in managing the disease, such as lacking a fridge to keep healthy meals or a safe place to store medication.</p> <p>“We are all here to commemorate and celebrate the discovery of insulin right here in Canada, which is truly worth celebrating,” Campbell said. “However, we must not lose track of the fact that insulin is not enough on its own.”</p> <p>Referring to Banting’s sale of patent rights to insulin for $1, he said: “I postulate that we owe it to Banting and to the other pioneers of our field to make the highest quality diabetes care available to all beyond just access to insulin.”</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Mon, 30 Nov 2020 22:03:15 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 167707 at