Frederick Grant Banting

Discoverer of Insulin - Diabetes
Frederick Grant Banting was the first doctor who discovered insulin in the world. He was born November 14, 1891 in Allison, Ontario Canada. He was the youngest of five brothers partner William Thompson Banting and Margaret Grant. Continue their education after high school at the University of Toronto majoring in Theology and moved into medical school. In 1916 Frederick received his MB and worked as a physician in the Canadian Army corps. After World War I ended he majored in school again while working at an orthopedic hospital. He also works part-time to be faculty orthopedics at the University of Western Ontario Canada.


Since 1921, Frederick became a lecturer for a year of pharmacology University of Toronto and received his MD and a medal for his services. Insulin is a hormone that converts blood sugar / glucose into muscle glucose / glycogen produced in the pancreas. Deficiency of this hormone can cause diabetes. Dr. Frederick with his assistant Charles Best started his experiments in the discovery of insulin and the results are quite encouraging. Assisted Macleod and chemist James Collip through insulin extraction technique was able to produce insulin which extracts useful as it is now, then produce it on a large scale through tissue culture with the help of micro-organisms. Previously, however, Banting had become deeply interested in diabetes.


Work of Naunyn, Minkowski, Opie, Schafer, and others have shown that diabetes is caused by a deficiency of protein hormone secreted by the islands of Langerhans in the pancreas. Schafer has been given the hormone insulin's name, and he suspected that insulin controls the metabolism of sugar, resulting in a deficiency in the accumulation of sugar in the blood and excretion of excess sugar in the urine. Efforts to supply food missing insulin by the pancreas of patients with fresh, or extracts from it, has failed, perhaps because the protein insulin in these had been destroyed by proteolytic enzymes from the pancreas. The problem, therefore, is how to extract insulin from the pancreas before it's been so destroyed.



While he was considering this problem, Banting read in a medical journal article by Moses Baron, which shows that, when the pancreatic duct was closed by ligatures experiments, the cells of the pancreas which secrete trypsin degenerate, but the Reference Biography: that the islands of Langerhans remain intact. It is suggested to Banting the idea that ligation of the pancreatic duct would, by destroying the cells which secrete trypsin, avoid the destruction of the insulin, so that, after sufficient time has been allowed for degeneration of the trypsin-secreting cells, insulin may be extracted from the islands Langerhans intact. Determined to investigate this possibility, Banting discussed with various people, among whom was JJR Macleod, Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto, and Macleod gave him facilities for experimental work.



Dr. Charles Best, then a medical student, Banting was appointed as an assistant, and together, Banting and Best began the work that led to the discovery of insulin. In 1922 Banting was appointed senior demonstrator in Medicine at the University of Toronto, and in 1923 he was elected Chairman of the Banting and Best Medical Research, which has been awarded by the Ontario Provincial Legislature. He was also appointed Honorary Consulting Physician to Toronto General Hospital, Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto Western Hospital. In the Banting and Best Institute, Banting dealt with the problems of silicosis, cancer, the mechanism of drowning and how to overcome it. During World War II he became very interested in the problems associated with flying (such as blackout). Besides his medical degree, Banting also obtained, in 1923, LL.D. degree degree (Queens) and D. Sc degree (Toronto). Before the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1923, he received along with Macleod, he received the Reeve of the University of Toronto (1922). In 1923, the Canadian Parliament granted him life annuity of $ 7,500. Banting in 1928 gave Cameron Lecture in Edinburgh. He was appointed as a member of numerous medical academies and societies in the country and abroad, including Britain and the American Physiological Society, and American Society of Pharmacology. He was awarded a knighthood in 1934. In 1923 Frederick Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize in medicine and in 1924 King George V Canada provide a degree knight (knight) to him. He married Marion Robertson, but then divorced and remarried to Henrietta Ball in 1937. When World War II Frederick Banting joined the corps of the Canadian Air Force and was involved in various projects of making biological weapons, including anthrax bacteria production on a large scale. In 1941, exactly on February 21 Frederick Banting died in a plane crash when he was on a flight in New Founland.