Word: insulin
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...recent years coffee has been tentatively tied to various afflictions, including diabetes, heart attack, and cancer of the colon, urinary tract and stomach. Last week Harvard University researchers announced a statistical link between coffee and cancer of the pancreas. The pancreas produces enzymes vital to digestion and the hormone insulin for sugar metabolism. Pancreatic cancer claims 22,000 lives a year. It is the fifth largest cause of cancer death in the U.S., behind cancer of the lungs, colon, breast and prostate. It is also virtually incurable; fewer than 2% of patients survive five years after diagnosis...
...attention given to interferon, insulin and human growth hormones, the company Cetus will probably market the first gene-splicing product when it comes out with an animal vaccine that will prevent the disease which breeders say kills 10 per cent of all pigs. Such vaccines, vitamins and antibiotics will be the first generation of genetic engineering products of a business less than two years...
...drug closest to commercial production by gene-splicing techniques is insulin, the hormone that enables the body to burn sugar for energy. Last December a Derby, Kans., housewife, Sandy Athertone, 37, became the first diabetic to be injected with bacterially made insulin. It came from the pharmaceutical labs of Eli Lilly, which is spending $40 million to build plants in Indianapolis and outside Liverpool, England, to make human insulin by means of recombinant DNA. More recently other diabetics began receiving bacterial insulin in a test program in six U.S. cities. Lilly plans similar trials in Canada and Europe. Says...
Lilly and other drug makers can easily meet current demand for insulin by extracting it from the pancreases of cows and pigs. The trouble is that of all diabetics on insulin?some 1.8 million people in the U.S. alone?5% suffer allergic reactions to the animal hormone because it differs ever so slightly from the human variety. It may also cause some of the circulatory problems associated with diabetes. By contrast, virtually every atom of the bacterial product is identical to insulin made in the body, and so should produce few reactions...
...taken care of and their particular value recognized." Boyer did his job extremely well. Today, after less than five years, Genentech probably has the best research facilities in the gene-splicing business (40 Ph.D.s, 65 technicians). It has produced and is testing half a dozen recombinant DNA products, including insulin, human growth hormone and various types of human interferon. Swanson gives Boyer the highest grades: "For an academic, he's got an incredible sense of what's important from a business standpoint...