Canadian
physician who discovered a technique for isolating the hormone insulin
1921 when he and his colleague Charles Best tied off the ducts of the
pancreas to determine the function of the cells known as the islets of
Langerhans. This made possible the treatment of diabetes. Banting and
John J R Macleod (1876-1935), his mentor, shared the 1923 Nobel Prize
for Physiology or Medicine, and Banting divided his prize with Best.
Banting was born in Alliston, Ontario, and studied medicine at the University
of Toronto, where from 1921 he carried out research into diabetes. It
had been suggested that insulin might be concerned in glucose metabolism
and that its source might be the islets of Langerhans. Banting reasoned
that if the pancreas were destroyed but the islets of Langerhans were
retained, the absence of digestive enzymes would allow them to isolate
insulin. With Charles Best, one of his undergraduate students, he experimented
on dogs. Next, he obtained fetal pancreatic material from an abattoir.
Eventually reasonably pure insulin was produced and commercial production
of the hormone started. |