Insulin analogs (like Humalog and Lantus) are "designer" molecules
that are "analogous" to human insulin, but not identical to it.
Therefore they can be given enhanced properties.

To really understand how any drug or hormone works in the body, it may
help to learn two words. Pharmacology describes the chemical or amino
acid structure of a compound. Pharmacokinetics describes how these
compounds work in the body.

Human insulin (as made by the human beta-cells) is made up of a chain of
amino acids in a specific order. The order that the individual amino
acids take is the pharmacology of human insulin. The pharmacokinetics of
human insulin includes which receptor sites on cells the insulin
attaches to, what happens when it does.

Animal insulin is made from grinding up the pancreases of slaughtered
animals. Pork insulin only has a couple of transpositions or differences
in the amino acid formula from human insulin. Beef insulin has a few
more differences from human insulin than pork. These pharmacological
differences are minor enough to make the animal insulins look enough
like human insulin to have similar pharmacokinetics in a human body.

Human insulins created via rDNA technology in laboratory vats (Humulin
and Novolin)  are man-made to be as close to real human insulin as
possible. You can think of them as human insulin clones.

Analog (or analogue) insulins are man-made using the rDNA cloning
processes above, but the order of the amino acids in the chain
(pharmacology) are purposely selected and ordered for a specific
purpose. The body recognizes these as insulin, but the purposeful
differences between them and human insulin causes their unique
characteristics (their pharmacokinetics). One of these characteristics
in Humalog and Novolog is very fast absorption and action within the body.

Other analogs include Lantus, Levemir, and Apidra which are custom
manmade chains of amino acids which have specific custom designed
characteristics.

I'll attempt to answer the other open question in this thread. At one
time, it was thought that the pharmacokinetics of the first analog
(Humalog) were so different from the rDNA Regular insulin that people
were used to using, that it could be dangerous unless carefully
monitored by a doctor. That was the excuse for making Humalog a
Class-III controlled substance, i.e., a medicine requiring a prescription.

Interestingly enough, this approach was pushed very hard by the
pharmaceutical companies with the FDA in the US. Why would a company
choose to purposely limit the availability of one of its products, and
therefore, the gross income derived from that product? If one discounts
altruism as the motive, and I think that is a safe bet with Big Pharma,
the reason must be economic. By making its new analog "special", and
requiring a script, they could charge vastly more for the same volume of
product, thereby raising their profit. And so Humalog has a street price
of about 3x that of Humulin-R.

Unfortunately, this precedent remains today for the newer analogs.
Lantus is arguably very similar to UL, but since it is C-III it can
demand a price roughly 3x that of UL. Now, the new analogs have
supplanted the older insulins, like Humulin-UL, and actually caused UL
to be discontinued. The only easily available true basal insulins in the
US are now analogs, which sell for roughly 3x the price of the older
insulins they replaced. So, Big Pharma just tripled their profits while
selling the same quantity of rDNA insulin.

As Jacob Smirnoff said, "What a country!"

Jim

http://www.canpharm.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.display/pn/HUMALOG.Vials/pr
oduct_id/46.htm&ovchn=GGL&ovcpn=canpharm_otc_google&ovcrn=humalog_cheap&ovtac=PP
C

How does $30 + $10 s/h = $40 for humalog suit you?  Walmart charges
$84.