Scientists, in cooperation with doctors and representatives of a pharmaceutical company, are working on a special capsule that will perform an injection inside the patient’s stomach. This can be a great help in taking medications in diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
- Monoclonal antibodies are used to treat many diseases. These types of drugs are usually injectable, which is their biggest disadvantage
- A team of scientists and doctors is working on a capsule that will be injected inside the patient’s stomach and then expelled
- Animal studies show promising results
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
Monoclonal antibodies are proteins that mimic the body’s own immune defenses and help fight various diseases. Medicines of this type have already been used successfully. Their biggest disadvantage is that they have to be injected. A team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, in collaboration with scientists from the Brigham and Women’s hospital and a pharmaceutical company works on a capsule which, when swallowed, “by itself” injects the drug directly into the lining stomach.
Capsule instead of injection
Most drugs that contain large proteins cannot be taken orally because enzymes in the digestive tract break them down right away. That is why injections are used, but too frequent injections are troublesome for patients. In 2019, the MIT team and colleagues developed a capsule that can be used to inject insulin at doses up to 300 µg. Now scientists have redesigned its interior so that it can be used to deliver up to 4 mg of liquid medicine. In this way, scientists would like to give patients insulin or adrenaline.
The research is published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The capsule is compared to a turtle that can straighten up when it rolls over on its back. The capsule is able to orientate its needle towards the stomach lining. The stomach lining is thick, allowing drugs to be injected and minimizing the risk of harmful side effects.
The new capsule is a mechanism that includes an injection needle and two plungers. One plunger helps to push fluid out of the capsule, and when the capsule is empty, the other plunger pulls the needle back into the capsule, which is safely expelled through the gastrointestinal tract.
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It’s a quick way to get important medications. Therefore, scientists believe that drugs that are used could be taken in this way in the treatment of autoimmune disorderssuch as inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis or in treatment diabetes Type 2.
Successful insulin capsule tests
In their research, scientists administered insulin capsules to the animals for several days and found that the drugs were delivered inside the stomach precisely every time, and the level of the drug in the body was almost identical to that of traditional injections. There was no sign of damage to the gastric mucosa after the capsule injections, which penetrated the tissue by approximately 4,5 mm.
A team of scientists is working on the further development of the method.
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