Via @[17200272:2048:Cameron Colby Thomson]
"Last year, the Open Insulin Project raised $16,656 in one of the more ambitious efforts to radically transform diabetes care. So far, the small team of researchers has inserted the genes that make proinsulin (the form of insulin produced by the human body) into E. coli bacteria and began culturing the organism on a larger scale.
The intent is not to make insulin at home, or on an industrial scale. Any drug that is injected comes with substantial risks and would face considerable regulatory scrutiny. Rather, the hackers hope to be able to demonstrate the technological feasibility. Within a year or two, Mr. Di Franco said he envisions handing off the protocols and any intellectual property to a generics manufacturer.
“One thing that would make me happy,” he said, “is that if more people who needed insulin got ahold of it by whatever means necessary.”
Dr. Jeremy A. Greene, a physician and historian at Johns Hopkins University, who recently wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine about the lack of generic insulin, said patients with diabetes had a long history of tinkering with existing technology, even in ways that were not officially sanctioned."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/health/a-do-it-yourself-revolution-in-diabetes-care.html?_r=0
http://openinsulin.org/
"Last year, the Open Insulin Project raised $16,656 in one of the more ambitious efforts to radically transform diabetes care. So far, the small team of researchers has inserted the genes that make proinsulin (the form of insulin produced by the human body) into E. coli bacteria and began culturing the organism on a larger scale.
The intent is not to make insulin at home, or on an industrial scale. Any drug that is injected comes with substantial risks and would face considerable regulatory scrutiny. Rather, the hackers hope to be able to demonstrate the technological feasibility. Within a year or two, Mr. Di Franco said he envisions handing off the protocols and any intellectual property to a generics manufacturer.
“One thing that would make me happy,” he said, “is that if more people who needed insulin got ahold of it by whatever means necessary.”
Dr. Jeremy A. Greene, a physician and historian at Johns Hopkins University, who recently wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine about the lack of generic insulin, said patients with diabetes had a long history of tinkering with existing technology, even in ways that were not officially sanctioned."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/health/a-do-it-yourself-revolution-in-diabetes-care.html?_r=0
http://openinsulin.org/