Team:Sydney Australia

D.I.S.C.O

D.I.S.C.O: Designing Insulin to be Single Chain and Open-Source!

Project Description

Our project is currently aimed at addressing problems faced in insulin accessibility.

Insulin manufacture and sale is currently dominated by three big pharmaceutical giants, and while various insulin patents have expired, there has been no introduction of cheaper, generic insulins into the insulin market. Current trends are showing an increase in the price of insulin despite this expiry of patents. This makes the accessibility of insulin, particularly in developing countries, extremely difficult. Another factor which continues to be problematic in developing countries is the required refrigerated storage of insulin.

You may be wondering, why is this a problem? As it stands, 3 companies have a 92% market share of insulin, which means that despite the fact that generic insulins COULD be made by these companies, they have no financial incentive to. Basically, they have such a high market share, they can produce what they like, they can charge for what they like, and no one can do much about it. Producing a generic, older analogue of insulin would only undercut their profits, so obviously these companies are not going to do anything about the issue any time soon.

Therefore, our team aims to address these challenges in world-wide insulin accessibility by designing an insulin analogue that is open-source and thermally stable (single chained).

Our Project Objectives:
  • To express and purify Human insulin from Escherichia coli and Bacillis subtilis
  • To express and purify SCI-57 insulin analogue from Escherichia coli and Bacillis subtilis
  • To express and purify our own modified insulin from Escherichia coli and Bacillis subtilis
  • To use a new selection method within a newly designed plasmid
  • To learn from our mistakes, and solve our problems when we are challenged
  • To integrate within the disbetic community to learn from the challenges faced by people from all over the globe, and to hopefully understand the complexity of the issues
  • To have fun!