ASHLEY HALL: Australian researchers have made a discovery which could spell the end of daily injections for hundreds of thousands of Australians.

About a million Australians have diabetes and many of them rely on regular injections of insulin.

Now scientists have uncovered the exact way the body handles insulin and that could lead to more efficient and much more convenient treatments.

Simon Lauder reports.

SIMON LAUDER: Insulin is what makes the cells of the body take in sugar from the blood. For decades scientists have been trying to work out how that works.

MIKE LAWRENCE: This is an absolute breakthrough. People have been trying to work out the centre action between insulin that's a receptor ever since the receptor was characterised in the mid-80s.

SIMON LAUDER: Using the Australian synchrotron, Professor Mike Lawrence and his research team at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research have discovered how molecules of insulin bind to a protein on the cells of the body.

Professor Lawrence says up until now, insulin therapy for diabetes has been designed without that knowledge.

MIKE LAWRENCE: Totally in the dark, I mean everything has been done indirectly, it's not totally random, but people have stepped through the insulin molecule, tried to change this, tried to change that, seen what works, seen what doesn't work.

But no-one to date has actually known why it's like that, and that's what we've shown. So as new insulins will need to be developed, our work is going to form the platform for that development work.

SIMON LAUDER: What are the implications of your discovery?

MIKE LAWRENCE: This is fundamental piece of research, to look at what has been a longstanding missing piece of information in the background to the design of insulins. So the application down the track is that as pharmaceutical companies try to develop new and better insulins that are perhaps easier to administer, or administered less often or easier to store, so particularly in developing countries where there isn't adequate refrigeration - all of that work can now utilise the platform that we have developed to make basically better insulins.

SIMON LAUDER: The clinical advisor for Diabetes Australia, Dr Jenny Gunton, says it's an important discovery for the hundreds of thousands of Australians who use insulin injections to control their diabetes.

JENNY GUNTON: One of the key questions my patients ask me often is, is there a tablet to take instead of insulin? And at the moment the answer is no.

SIMON LAUDER: And do you think that will happen soon?

JENNY GUNTON: I think that this is like the $64 billion prize for a drug company, if it can develop a tablet to mimic insulin. So I don't know how difficult it will be, but I think most drug companies that work in the field of manufacturing insulins will be on this as soon as they can.

SIMON LAUDER: Professor Lawrence says knowledge of how the insulin receptor works may have applications for other diseases, including cancer.

MIKE LAWRENCE: In a cancer environment in tumours, you might get insulin, the insulin signalling system actually setting up tumour growth, and that's something that we're only just beginning to realise.

So it's not inconceivable that our research into the interactions involving the insulin receptor might actually lead to therapeutic development for cancer.

SIMON LAUDER: The findings are published today in the journal Nature.

ASHLEY HALL: Simon Lauder.