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Quote by Frederick Banting from his 1980 Nobel Lecture: Frederick Banting, Charles Best, John J.R. Macleod, and James Collip succeeded in producing extracts of pancreas that contained an effective anti-diabetic agent in their University of Toronto lab in 1921 and 1922. This work followed the earlier 1910 work by Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Shafer who realized it was only one chemical that people with diabetes were lacking in their pancreas - which he called 'insulin' (from the Latin word insula - island). Diabetic patients at the Toronto General Hospital were successfully treated, and in 1923 Banting and Maclead received a Nobel Prize in medicine.

Banting famously sold his rights to insulin to the University of Toronto for $1. The University worked to ensure as many people as possible could get inexpensive insulin by extending its patent to 25 countries, setting up oversea insulin oversight committees, and establishing a system of patent pooling so it could control innovations and costs.

For more details on Frederick Banting (Discovered Insulin) see the wikipedia article here.

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