Abstract
WE have received from Messrs. Burroughs, Well come and Co., London, a phial of “Wellcome” brand insulin prepared from crystalline insulin. This is the first commercial insulin to be made from the crystals and is available in 5 c.c. phials at 20 units per c.c. When insulin was first placed on the market some ten years ago, the potency of the material was only a few units per milligram. For some time now, however, the potency of many commercial insulins has approximated that of the pure crystals, but this is the first time that the crystalline material has been employed for the preparation of insulin solution on the commercial scale. Crystals were first made by Abel in 1926: the problem was further investi gated by Harington and Scott in 1929, and more recently Scott has shown that the ease with which crystals can be obtained from amorphous insulin depends on the presence of small quantities of zinc (or some other metals), and that all crystals prepared by the pyridine-brucine or saponin methods contain this element.
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Commercial Insulin. Nature 134, 733 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134733a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134733a0