Thanks to a new discovery by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, painful injections and intravenous drugs could potentially be a thing of the past.
Inspired by the way squids (yes, squids!) use jets to propel themselves through the ocean, shooting ink clouds, researchers took this biological process to the lab.
The result is an ingestible capsule that “releases a burst of drugs directly into the wall of the stomach or other organs in the digestive tract,” developed by researchers from MIT and Novo Nordisk.
“One of the longstanding challenges that we’ve been exploring is the development of systems that enable the oral delivery of macromolecules that usually require an injection to be administered,” Giovanni Traverso, a mechanical engineering professor at MIT and gastroenterologist said.
“This work represents one of the next major advances in that progression.”
Traverso was the senior author of the study, which concludes that the capsule could offer an alternative to delivering drugs that normally have to be injected, like insulin, antibodies, and even mRNA.
The reason these drugs cannot be taken orally is because they consist of large proteins that are easily broken down in the digestive tract, rendering them ineffective.
For years, Traverso’s lab has been working on a solution, encapsulating these drugs in small devices that protect them through their journey in the body until they reach the lining of the digestive tract, where they can be injected directly into the system.
In previous iterations, he and his colleagues devised capsules that use microneedles to deliver the drugs once they enter the digestive system.
But in this new study (recently published in Nature), the researchers went completely needle-free.
Taking inspiration from cephalopods — or squids and octopuses — the researchers came up with two ways to mimic their siphon organ, which allows these animals to shoot jets of ink to distract predators.
They utilized compressed carbon dioxide and tightly coiled springs to generate a force that would propel liquid drugs out of the capsule. Either the gas or spring would be kept in a compressed state by a “carbohydrate trigger,” which dissolves when exposed to humidity or acid (both of which can be found in the stomach).
Once that trigger dissolves, the gas or spring expands and propels the necessary drugs out of the capsule and into the body.
“Aside from the elimination of sharps, another potential advantage of high-velocity columnated jets is their robustness to localization issues,” researcher Graham Arrick said.
“In contrast to a small needle, which needs to have intimate contact with the tissue, our experiments indicated that a jet may be able to deliver most of the dose from a distance or at a slight angle.”
In a series of experiments, the researchers calculated the pressures needed to push the drugs out with enough force to get past the body’s tissues and accumulate in the stomach.
They also designed the capsules to target various parts of the digestive tract. The first is about the size of a blueberry and can carry 80 microliters of a drug, sitting in the lining of the stomach and ejecting downward into the tissue.
The other is more of a tubular shape that can align in organs like the esophagus or small intestine, where drugs are ejected out to the side, delivering 200 microliters of medicine.
And don’t fret — once the drugs are administered, the capsules (which are made of metal and plastic) simply pass through the digestive tract naturally.
Although researchers have only tested the device on animals so far, the trails have shown resounding success. In these tests, the capsule successfully delivered insulin, a drug similar to Ozempic, and a type of RNA that can be used in treating genetic disorders.
In this research, success was calculated by measuring the concentration of drugs in the animals’ bloodstream, which reached the same levels as drugs administered by injections. Plus, there was no tissue damage after the fact.
“This technology is a significant leap forward in oral drug delivery of macromolecule drugs,” Omid Veiseh, a bioengineering professor at Rice University said in a statement.
Veiseh was not involved in the research but saw promise in its future implementation.
“While many approaches for oral drug delivery have been attempted in the past, they tend to be poorly efficient in achieving high bioavailability,” he continued. “Here, the researchers demonstrate the ability to deliver bioavailability in animal models with high efficiency.”
According to MIT, the researchers will now work to further develop the capsules, in hopes of testing them in humans.
Their ultimate vision is that the capsules could be used at home by patients who need to take insulin or other injected drugs frequently. The approach also eliminates the need to dispose of sharp needles, creating a safer — and more comfortable — experience for patients and providers alike.
Header image courtesy of YVC Biology Department (CC BY 2.0)
