Engineered insulin could offer better diabetes control

For patients with diabetes, insulin is critical to maintaining good health and normal blood-sugar levels. However, it's not an ideal solution because it can be difficult for patients to determine exactly how much insulin they need to prevent their blood sugar from swinging too high or too low.

MIT engineers hope to improve treatment for diabetes patients with a new type of engineered insulin. In tests in mice, the researchers showed that their modified insulin can circulate in the bloodstream for at least 10 hours, and that it responds rapidly to changes in blood-sugar levels. This could eliminate the need for patients to repeatedly monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin throughout the day.

"The real challenge is getting the right amount of insulin available when you need it, because if you have too little insulin your blood sugar goes up, and if you have too much, it can go dangerously low," says Daniel Anderson, the Samuel A. Goldblith Associate Professor in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. "Currently available insulins act independent of the sugar levels in the patient."