The Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine, 1923: controversies on the discovery of the antidiabetic hormone

Aims

To analyze the main contributions to the discovery of the antidiabetic hormone in the period between 1889, the year in which Oskar Minkowski demonstrated that complete pancreatectomy in dogs caused diabetes, and the year 1923, the date in which the clinical use of insulin was consolidated. A main objective has been to review the controversies that followed the Nobel Prize and to outline the role of the priority rule in Science.

Methods

We have considered the priority rule defined by Robert Merton in 1957, which takes into account the date of acceptance of the report of a discovery in an accredited scientific journal and/or the granting of a patent, complemented by the criteria set out by Ronald Vale and Anthony Hyman (2016) regarding the transfer of information to the scientific community and its validation by it. The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in October 1923 has represented a frame of reference. The claims and disputes regarding the prioritization of the contributions of the main researchers in the organotherapy of diabetes have been analyzed through the study of their scientific production and the debate generated in academic institutions.

Main results and conclusions

(1) According to the criteria of Merton, Vale and Hyman, the priority of the discovery of the antidiabetic hormone corresponds to the investigations developed in Europe by E. Gley (1900), GL Zülzer (1908) and NC Paulescu (1920). (2) The active principle of the pancreatic extracts developed by Zülzer (acomatol), Paulescu (pancreina) and Banting and Best (insulin) was the same. (3) JB Collip succeeded in isolating the active ingredient from the pancreatic extract in January 1922, eliminating impurities to the point of enabling its use in the clinic. (4) In 1972, the Nobel Foundation modified the purpose of the 1923 Physiology or Medicine award to Banting and Macleod by introducing a new wording: "the credit for having produced the pancreatic hormone in a practical available form" (instead of “for the discovery of insulin”).