Lantus - Insulin Glargine

Part A

        Biotechnology contribute our society and future so many way such as agriculture with genetic modified crops, industrial with genetically engineered protein for industry. But the most important is the in Medical and Pharmaceutical area. They use biotechnology in order to manufacturing drugs by manipulation of microorganism to process and these drugs can be treat specific diseases. (Morad, 2015) But how the biotechnology drug be produced? According to Amgen (n.d),the manufacturing contain four main process which is first, make the desired protein by producing the gene. Second, multiple the number of cells in order to make the protein. Third, the protein that needed will be isolated and purified. Lastly, testing on some common bacteria such as E coli . Therefore, this assignment I will focus the biotechnology drug which is Lantus.

        According to Drugs.com (n.d), Lantus also with generic name as insulin glargine. The drugs is be made for to treat 2 diabetes in adults only and type 1 diabetes in adults and children. From Webmd (n.d), Type 1 diabetes is caused by the cells are destroyed by your own immune system therefore the production of insulin also be stopped and Type 2 diabetes is due to the body unable to use insulin which is called insulin resistance. It will make pancreas produce less insulin. Therefore, Lantus will be act as long-acting insulins, it unlike short-acting insulins with blood sugar peak. The long-acting insulins will work in the background to control blood sugar and Lantus able to lasts up to 24 hours. Patient will inject Lantus by using needle or pen device in fixed time to avoid insulin coverage. However, it might give patient some side effect such as dizziness, weakness and so on, this is due to hypoglycemia which is low blood sugar.(Watson, n.d). According to Hwang et al. (2016), the active ingredient of Lantus which is glargine insulin is manufactured by recombinant DNA technology. By genetic engineering techniques, the insulin analogs are produced in E coli  and modified from human insulin gene. Insulin glargine has two additional arginine residues and one amino acid modification from Asn to Gly. The physical properties of insulin glargine influence the mechanism of precipitation and the kinetics of its absorption and dissolution with insulin hexamer with zinc ion.

        According to Sanofi (n.d), the first long-acting insulin is launched by Hoecast at the year 1953, The product Lantus was launched at year 2000 by Sanofi. The company Sanofi own the biggest market of diabetes drug, the sale of Lantus is getting higher in recent years, swelling by 20% between 2012 and 2013 and by 19.3% the year before that (Helfand 2014). This show the impact of the biotechnology drug to society and company profit from there. Lastly, biotechnology drug is the mainstream of Medical, the future and further disease will be more rely on it. No matter in profit aspect or public health, the improvement of biotechnology is notable.

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