My insulin experiment for Michel...Relax everyone!

Medicines Insulin
22

Maybe just voodoo?

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23

Has anyone here heard of flash freezing insulin? Basically the process of freezing (the slow way) creates a crystalline structure that damages the insulin molecule (making it less effective or non effective)… I know there was an older study that showed that you could flash freeze insulin in liquid nitrogen, then store it regularly in the freezer–bypassing the damaging aspects of typical freezing. I do not think this was done with modern insulin, however, and cannot find any mention of anyone ever trying. Theoretically, there would be no expiration date.

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24

Sounds like a great experiment for a blog post… if we only had a scientist to properly carry out a legit experiment… know any?

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26

I haven’t heard of this, but I would love to get a hold of a used medical freeze dryer to try and create some lypholized insulin for long term storage. I suspect that as long as you use liquid nitrogen to freeze you will be fine. You may need a deep freeze to keep for long term storage though not sure about that. In our old lab we would have stored at liquid nitrogen temps for long term storage.

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28

I didn’t consider lyophilizing insulin. Very good idea. We usually keep our long term storage in our lab at -80C. I read in the old study that once the samples are flash frozen, normal below freezing temperatures are sufficient for storage.

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I don’t know about a scientist, but I can round you up a human guinea pig to test on…

Actually, now that I think about it, if you promise donuts, maybe Doc would be game too!

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31

I would be worried about very long term storage at normal freezer temps, I did some work long ago with an apo-enzyme, and whenever we stored it above liquid nitrogen temps, the enzyme wasn’t as active after being re-constituted. Our guess was even at freezer temps enough movement of the proteins was allowing some of it to degrade.

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32

Interesting

33

Eric - this is great stuff.

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34

Donuts? I’m in!

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37

And while you are at it, make a donut one for Doc and me.

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38

I remember reading that the flash freezing method only worked on older insulins? If I find a link, I’ll post it here.

But if it does work, I’m all in for a chocolate donut!

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