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Forty years ago, recombinant DNA technology caused a revolution in the way growth disorders and diabetes could be treated. Bacteria or human cells were modified so as to be able to produce human hormones instead of relying on cadaveric material in the case of growth disorders and porcine insulin in the case of diabetics. The new technology also removed the risk of contracted hepatitis or fatal Creutzfeldt Jacob disease.

A signal peptide was used to transport the new protein into the periplasmic space giving rise to an exact, correctly folded version of monomeric human growth hormone.

More eligible patients could be treated, resulting not only in a large number of clinical trials. Daily tiny subcutaneous injections were found to be much more effective than twice or thrice weekly in the treatment of children and adults,

The progress for recombinant human insulin turned out to be somewhat different. Insulin is a more complicated protein, with an Alpha and Beta chain joined by two disulphide bridges, but is produced in the human pancreas as a single chain, proinsulin, the C peptide is removed to make the active molecule.

Recombinant insulin development was in a way the opposite to growth hormone since human insulin acts faster than porcine. Short fast and long-acting analogues have been developed all to improve the treatment regimens for both type 1 and type 2 diabetics,

A similar development is now taking place in the growth hormone field. Depot preparations for weekly administration are under development to achieve better compliance. One recently approved depot uses an analogue, modified in one amino acid of the peptide chain to permit acylation and albumin binding. In a way this is a retrograde step and it remains to be seen if the patient’s growth and metabolic responses are comparable to the daily administration of tiny amount of recombinant natural sequence hormone over several years of treatment.