Integration of SPC-insulin plasmid into E. coli BL21 expression system to develop a long-lasting effect of insulin and reducing dosages in a cost-effective manner

According to the World Health Organization, insulin is an essential medicine, because patients with diabetes are increasing daily. Current commercial insulin has a short half-life, this requires patients to take multiple doses/injections which causes pain-point for patients. Another economic pain-point is how expensive insulin is due to multiple steps of production. The research done intends to address these pain points by introducing the SPC-insulin. Current insulin can last from 6-8 hours while the SPC-insulin can last 24-40 hours. Another advantage is that SPC-insulin can be directly produced “one step” using economic expression systems. These advantages of SPC-insulin would reduce the required dosages by ⅓ and cost by 70%. This project has two specific aims regarding the translation of the novel invention of SPC-insulin into pharmaceutical production. This presentation is focused on the first aim which is to screen clones of E.coli BL21 that expresses SPC-insulin. This is crucial because it will give us the basis to translate SPC-insulin from research to reproducible pharmaceutical production. The best clones would show the highest stability and reproducibility of the recombinant SPC-insulin plasmid. In order to accomplish the first aim, I will culture E.coli BL21 and transform the SPC-insulin into the E.coli plasmid. Next, I would use selected agar plates to grow clones of the E.coli containing the SPC-insulin plasmid. The best clone from approximately 15 clones available, will be selected. This will lead the lab to the second aim which is to develop an E. coli bioreactor system.