New robotic pill makes insulin injections obsolete
New robotic pill makes insulin injections obsolete. A novel medication capsule created at MIT will be able to replace insulin injections by delivering the treatment’s components through a robotic capsule that spins and tunnels through the small intestine’s mucus barrier.
Protein medications would have to be administered intravenously since they cannot pass through the mucus lining of the digestive tract.
Giovanni Traverso is a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an assistant professor of development in the department of mechanical engineering at MIT, said that “by displacing the mucus, we can maximise the dispersion of the drug within a local area and enhance the absorption of both small molecules and macromolecules”.
Vancomycin and insulin both need to be injected, and this method of delivery has been found to be extremely effective. Protein medications cannot be taken orally since they tend to degrade in the digestive tract’s acidic environment and may even have trouble passing the mucus barrier.
A novel medication capsule created at MIT will be able to replace insulin injections by delivering the treatment’s components through a robotic capsule that spins and tunnels through the small intestine’s mucus barrier.
Protein medications would have to be administered intravenously since they cannot pass through the mucus lining of the digestive tract.
“I thought that if we could tunnel through the mucus, then we could deposit the drug directly on the epithelium,” she said.
“The idea is that you would ingest this capsule and the outer layer would dissolve in the digestive tract, exposing all these features that start to churn through the mucus and clear it,” she added.
The tunnelling features are present in the RoboCap capsule’s main body and surface, while its pharmacological payload is contained in a tiny reservoir at one end.
The capsule has a gelatin coating that may breakdown at a particular pH level, causing a motor within to turn on and break through the mucus. The medicine will be released into the digestive tract by rotating the capsule, which will help sweep some of the mucus away.
According to Traverso, “What the RoboCap does is transiently displace the initial mucus barrier and then enhance absorption by maximising the dispersion of the drug locally. By combining all of these elements, we’re really maximising our capacity to provide the optimal situation for the drug to be absorbed.”
The mucus layer was replaced hours after it had been disturbed, and there was no evidence of inflammation or irritation in the digestive tract after the capsule passed through, according to study on the medicine conducted on animals.
According to the Bright Side of News, researchers are hopeful that the capsule can be used to administer topical medications to treat ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory illnesses by maximising the local concentration of the medications in the tissue to assist alleviate the inflammation.
