Polypeptide Hormones from Tissue Culture

Abstract

Peptide hormones have played an important role in modern medicine including the use of insulin to treat diabetes and the therapeutic application of ACTH and growth hormone. Recently, radioimmunoassays (1) suitable for diagnostic and research applications have been developed for a number of peptide hormones, e.g., insulin, parathyroid hormone, growth hormone, luteinizing hormone, prolactin and thyroid stimulating hormone. However, the lack of a large supply of the various human hormones has hampered both their therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Although peptide hormones from animal sources have been used effectively in some applications they frequently lack sufficient biological and immunological crossreactivity to be useful. Even in the case of insulin, where both porcine and bovine insulin have been used clinically, the allergic response of the patient can cause serious complications. Thus, the production of human peptide hormones from human cells in culture would have important applications in medicine and biomedical research.