A Nobel Prize, 100+ years ago
Toronto's Medical History
One of the most consequential medical discoveries of the 20th century happened in a University of Toronto lab in the summer of 1921 — and Toronto's hospitals have stayed near the centre of Canadian medicine ever since.
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Toronto's reputation as a finance and entertainment hub tends to overshadow a quieter fact: one of the most consequential medical breakthroughs of the last century happened here, in a University of Toronto laboratory, in a single summer.
The discovery (May–July 1921)
On May 17, 1921, Frederick Banting and his student assistant Charles Best began a summer research project in the laboratory of Scottish physiologist J.J.R. Macleod at the University of Toronto, testing a theory about the pancreas and diabetes. On July 27, 1921, they successfully isolated insulin for the first time — a hormone that, once purified with the help of biochemist James Collip, turned a type 1 diabetes diagnosis from a near-certain death sentence into a manageable chronic condition.
First treatment, and the Nobel Prize
On January 11, 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson became the first person treated with the new extract at Toronto General Hospital. The results were dramatic enough that news spread worldwide within months. Banting and Macleod were awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — Banting split his share of the prize money with Best, and Macleod split his with Collip, in recognition that the discovery was a team effort the Nobel committee's two-person rule couldn't fully capture.
Toronto's hospital and research corridor today
The University Avenue corridor between Queen's Park and downtown — sometimes called Toronto's Discovery District — remains one of the densest concentrations of hospitals and biomedical research anywhere in North America, anchored by Toronto General Hospital, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), one of the world's leading pediatric research hospitals, and MaRS Discovery District, a modern innovation hub built, fittingly, on the same site where insulin was first administered to patients. See our Toronto tech scene guide for how that same corridor evolved into a startup hub.
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Sources
- Heritage U of T — Discovery of Insulin at University of Toronto
- NobelPrize.org — The 'Miracle' Discovery That Reversed the Diabetes Death Sentence
- Diabetologia — The Discovery of Insulin in Toronto