Inaccessibility to Insulin

Big Pharma has grown to a multibillion industry affecting several sectors of medicine and patient care. It has also led to inaccessibility to certain medicines from patients who need it. An example of this is with insulin, which helps control glucose levels in the body for those with Type 1 diabetes. The price of this pharmaceutical product has skyrocketed over the past few decades, making it inaccessible to communities that require it to survive. This led to the founding of the Open Insulin Foundation, an organization working to recreate an insulin product for a lower price. With the goal of creating a way to easily reproduce insulin in homes, hospitals, labs, and more, the Open Insulin Foundation is contributing to stopping practices that make this life saving medicine inaccessible.

One of the main contributors to the inaccessibility of insulin is the fact that a very large population of patients exist meaning that the consumer need for insulin is always very present. Therefore, as insulin is a necessity, patients are forced to pay the price of whatever insulin they are prescribed, allowing the price to drastically climb. A monopoly on the product also exists, formed by three major pharmaceutical companies: Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Eli Lilly. These companies all participate in the practice of “evergreening,” which makes it nearly impossible for new contenders to enter the market. Evergreening is continually making minor scientific tweaks on their insulin products (also called analogues) as their intellectual property comes close to expiring and therefore renewing their patent. Other products are therefore blocked from entering the market. An example of this can be seen with the company Sanofi, which created an insulin product by the name of Lantus patented in 1944. However, it also had an extra seventy-four patents on newer versions of it, meaning it will be quite a while before it reaches the public domain. This case study sheds light on how these major players hold their current control on the insulin industry and why insulin prices have skyrocketed. This is extremely dangerous to patients who cannot afford these prices because it leads them potentially skipping their dosage or rationing it, which can have drastic consequences to their health.

The Open Insulin Foundation is trying to address this very prominent issue. The foundation has several different sectors and teams from around the world, including scientists who are working to create a reproducible insulin product that can be sold with an open source business model. They have currently developed proinsulin and are working to purify and develop mature insulin into a marketable product. Being able to sell this product with an open source model means that patients and doctors will not have to rely solely on the three major suppliers to gain access to this medicine. This work can hopefully lead to less reliance on expensive insulin vials for insured and uninsured patients. In addition to the research and development phase, the Open Insulin Foundation will have to overcome regulatory hurdles as well. The patenting process itself will not prove to be extremely difficult since it includes regulating the production of the drug; however, it is too much of a challenge to track the widespread manufacturing of insulin. Approving the drug will lead to millions of dollars being spent in clinical trials, and using a drug without approval can be very dangerous as it has not been deemed safe for human use. Bigger companies are deemed knowledgeable about insulin products so they can surpass this part of the patenting process when making changes to their products. Nevertheless, the foundation has a very passionate team working towards their goal everyday and can hopefully contribute to making insulin more accessible to patients who need it. More organizations such as this could lead to a paradigm shift for the medical and pharmaceutical industry in how medicines are created and distributed. This can hopefully lead to more accessibility to life-saving medicines without hurdles to overcome.