Insulin: The First Peptide Medicine - And Why It Matters Today
Insulin is a peptide. It has saved an estimated 100+ million lives since 1921. Every modern research peptide descends from this lineage - a primer on why peptide medicine deserves to be taken seriously.
Peptide medicine is not new, experimental, or fringe. It began in 1921 with insulin - and understanding that history is the single best way to put modern research peptides in context.
1921: the first peptide medicine
In the summer of 1921, Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin at the University of Toronto. On January 11, 1922, a 14-year-old patient dying of type-1 diabetes became the first human treated with it. The Nobel Prize followed in 1923. Before insulin, type-1 diabetes was a death sentence; today roughly 9 million people worldwide depend on it daily.
Insulin is a peptide
Insulin is a small protein of two chains and 51 amino acids, held together by disulfide bridges. By the modern biochemical definition it is firmly a peptide. Frederick Sanger sequenced it between 1949 and 1955 - making insulin the first protein ever sequenced and earning Sanger the first of two Nobel Prizes.
Eighty-plus approved peptide drugs
Today more than 80 peptide therapeutics are FDA-approved, including semaglutide, oxytocin, leuprolide, octreotide, calcitonin, vasopressin, and bremelanotide. Peptide medicine is one of the oldest and most successful chapters of modern pharmaceutical science.
For laboratory research use only. This article references published preclinical and clinical literature and is not medical advice, a therapeutic claim, or a recommendation for human use.