Scientists make ’Life-changing’ discovery for diabetes sufferers
Scientists say they have made a major breakthrough on insulin that could prove to be “life-changing” for diabetes sufferers — and the discovery is all thanks to a venomous snail.
VIC News
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Human insulin modified to mimic the venom of a deep sea snail could help speed up diabetes treatments and improve outcomes.
Scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have developed a new form of human insulin, called “mini-ins” which successfully mimics the quick-acting properties of cone snail venom insulin. The discovery means insulin would react almost instantly after being administered, rapidly lowering blood sugar levels.
Professor Mike Lawrence said the findings could be “life-changing” for diabetes sufferers.
“Even at this early stage of development, mini-ins was able to lower blood sugar levels as fast as the current best treatments that are in use,” Prof Lawrence said.
“This tells us that with further development the response time could be made even shorter. For diabetes patients this could be life-changing.”
Researchers have previously found cone snail venom can avoid the structural problems the make-up of human insulins have.
This led Prof Lawrence, his team and scientists at the University of Utah in America, to engineer human insulin to copy a similar structural make-up and enhance its response time.
“There’s a piece in human insulin that makes the insulin stick to itself and that’s one of the problems — when you inject insulin into the patient it doesn’t come apart quickly enough,” Prof Lawrence said.
“But when we saw the cone snail insulins, we found that they were lacking this piece to begin with.
“We’ve never been able to remove that piece before (in humans), because if you chop it off, it doesn’t work.
“So now we’ve taken insulin and chopped off the piece, and then we’ve looked at the cone snail and looked at its other features to bring the human insulin back to life.”
Mum Jade Erickson said being able to help son Justin, 11, and husband Michael, 45, almost immediately would boost their overall health outcomes.
The father and son both suffer from Type 1 diabetes, which Justin manages via an automatic insulin pump.
But Ms Erickson said things could still go wrong and fast-acting insulin was needed.
“Diabetes is so unpredictable and he (Justin) does have high levels for unknown reasons,” she said.
“It would be fantastic to bring that down quickly. The quicker we can get his sugar levels down, the better.
“It would not take away any of the burden, but it might take away some of the worry.”
Prof Lawrence said the new-look insulin would make the lives of diabetic patients — who usually need about 10-20 minutes between injecting insulin and eating food — much easier.
“The easier it is for the patient (the better),” Prof Lawrence said.
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