In 1921, Fred­er­ick Bant­i­ng and Charles Best at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to (J. J. R. Macleod lab­o­ra­to­ry) dis­cov­ered insulin, a pep­tide hor­mone pro­duced by beta cells of the pan­cre­at­ic islets (islets of Langer­hans) that reg­u­lates glu­cose metab­o­lism in the body. They were award­ed the Nobel Prize in Med­i­cine in 1923 for their dis­cov­ery, which rev­o­lu­tion­ized the treat­ment of dia­betes. Insulin ther­a­py allows peo­ple with dia­betes to con­trol their blood sug­ar lev­els and avoid the seri­ous com­pli­ca­tions of the disease.