
Biohackers Creating Open Source Insulin to Disrupt Big Pharma - januswandering
https://experiment.com/projects/open-insulin
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rdancer
This is misleading. The first insulin patent was filed in 1912, and has long
since entered the public domain. The drug has been vastly improved over the
years, but only the newest version is still patent-protected. The reason why
there are no generics in the US seems to be that unlike most drugs, where
virtually the entire cost lies in R&D, all the known variants of insulins are
very costly to produce. This is what this project aims at, gearing to develop
a genetically modified E. coli strain, which would bring down the cost of
production to that of citric acid.

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januswandering
So, we are doing the research to make a protocol for the production of
insulin. While the drug is off patent, it requires scientific research to
create a protocol to correctly express, fold and purify a biologic drug like
insulin. Just expressing pro-insulin from e-coli is not enough to create a
usable drug.

Here is an article explaining the generic market for insulin:
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms1411398](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms1411398)

And here is an explanation of the difficulties of creating insulin written by
our scientific adviser: [http://blog.indysci.org/insulin-is-hard-but-not-
impossible/](http://blog.indysci.org/insulin-is-hard-but-not-impossible/)

