Current advances and future prospects in production of recombinant insulin and other proteins to treat diabetes mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is the most prevalent deadly disease caused by the destruction and dysfunction of pancreatic β cells that consequentially increased blood glucose levels. The management of this disease via external administration of insulin/insulin analogs has been difficult and challenging due to their limited production and accessibility at affordable prices. The conventional insulin production platforms ( Escherichia coli , Saccharomyces cerevisiae and mammalian cell lines) with limited scalability and high upstream process costs have not been successful in meeting the rapidly increasing insulin demands. However, plants have been used as safe, scalable, environmentally friendly and cost-effective high capacity production platforms for recombinant orally delivered insulin. Recent technological advances in genome engineering and editing technologies for adequate insulin and insulin analogs production, renewable cellular sources of insulin through transplantation of islets or insulin-producing cells and reprogramming or differentiation of non β cells into β-like cells, used either alone or in combination, for diabetes containment are reviewed here along with their future prospects.