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May 3, 2017
Announcements, Living With Diabetes, News & Media, Research, Technology | insulin, mybcd
Today marks the 95th anniversary of the first use of the word insulin by its Canadian discovers Dr. Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best. Four months earlier they had saved the life of 14 year old Leonard Thompson by injecting him with a pancreatic extract (containing insulin) taken from a dog. A year later Banting & Best’s team (including Collip & MacLeod) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Since that time millions of lives have been saved by insulin. At BCDiabetes we celebrate that discovery today!
Banting, right, and Best, left, with one of the diabetic dogs used in experiments with insulin. Credits: University of Toronto Archives
With the passage of 95 years, great advances have been made in diabetes with better insulin, smarter doctors and amazing smartphone technology. Two months ago we blogged on the amazing smartphone-enabled Dexcom G5 CGM which sends glucose values to one’s phone every 5 minutes 24/7 and allows for the setting of high sugar and low sugar alarms. Smartphones are now an integral part of our lives. BCDiabetes has its own app under development called myBCD & has just applied to the Canadian Medical Association for a grant to fund a clinical trial to prove its effectiveness.
Yesterday Chinese researchers announced that they were able, using a smartphone and glucose sensor technology, to control glucose levels in diabetic mice transplanted with insulin-secreting cells responsive to light waves controlled by the smartphone. Read more about this astonishing achievement here.