#100 Years Later: Insulin and Beyond

Oct 27, 2021

In honour of our 100th episode here at Raw Talk Podcast, we are celebrating another anniversary this year: 100 years since the discovery of insulin, a life saving treatment for diabetes that happened here at the University of Toronto. This discovery earned the scientists behind it the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine, and was a pivotal moment in Canadian medical science research. In this episode, we sat down with Dr. Daniel Drucker, a senior scientist at the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute who gave us a crash course on diabetes, insulin, and the research leading up to the discovery of insulin. Next, we spoke with Jennifer Da Cruz, a diabetes patient, educator and public health nurse at Unison Health and Community Services in Toronto. Finally, we met with Dr. Paraish Misra, a nephrologist, and a PhD candidate in the Nostro lab at the University of Toronto, who told us about some of the exciting new frontiers in stem cell research for diabetes treatment - or possibly even cure.

Dr. Daniel Drucker
Diabetes Canada
Dr. Paraish Misra
Open Insulin Foundation
Article - The absurdly high cost of insulin, explained
Article - Why people with diabetes can't buy generic insulin
Review Article - Stem cell-derived insulin-producing cells