Biohackers With Diabetes Are Making Their Own Insulin
Diabetes is a punishingly expensive disease. In an Oakland warehouse, scientists are going DIY.
David Anderson pipettes yeast under a laboratory fume hood that’s surrounded by graffiti. From a beaker, he extracts a tiny amount of the microscopic fungus and transfers it to a test tube, which he then spins in a centrifuge to separate the proteins from the rest of the broth. The next day, he will inject the protein mix into an electrically charged gel, and if all goes well, the smallest protein will wiggle to the front, identifying itself as insulin.
Anderson is not a biochemist; he didn’t even major in science in college. He is part of the Open Insulin Project, a biohacker collective that is trying to produce the lifesaving drug and provide it to people with diabetes for free, or close to it.
Insulin enables cells in the body to use glucose circulating in the blood as fuel. People with Type 1 diabetes don’t produce enough insulin, while people with Type 2 diabetes have become resistant to it. Without sufficient insulin, people experience high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, which, over the long term, can cause heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and nerve damage. In severe cases of insulin insufficiency, ketoacidosis sets in, where the…
