Smart Insulin

Overview

Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed when there is little or no insulin produced by the beta cells in the pancreas; in type 2 diabetes tissue resistance against insulin is an important underlying problem. Using synthetic insulins to treat type 1 diabetes can be problematic, as the synthetic insulin is capable of surpassing the normal blood glucose concentration threshold of 90 – 110 mg/dL. The goal is to create “smart” insulins, a type of insulin that is active at high blood glucose levels and not active at low blood glucose levels. It is expected that the “smart” insulin due to its active-inactive properties will be safer. The experiment was done once by giving 16 rats Streptozotocin to induce diabetes and 8 were injected intravenously with the two tested insulins. Insulin KP was used as the control and B30 DOPA KP was the first tested prototype. Insulin KP is a fast acting insulin that is commonly used to treat diabetic patients. The fraction of the initial blood glucose level for the first hour of the experiment was 0.378 for insulin KP and 0.355 for B30 DOPA KP. These data suggest that B30 DOPA KP was active at high blood glucose levels. Further tests need to be done to determine if it is not active at low blood glucose levels. A “smart” insulin will help type 1 diabetic patients by providing a synthetic insulin that will remain active at high glucose levels, but prevent hypoglycemia by not being active at low blood glucose levels.

Competition history

• AJAS 2019 Category not listed

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Biomedical Engineering projects
• AJAS Biomedical Engineering projects
• Every AJAS 2019 project