Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have developed a pain-free drug delivery method where users place a few drops under their tongue to help people with diabetes manage the disease and maintain their health.
A hallmark of diabetes is diabetes patients cannot produce enough insulin to regulate blood glucose levels. Unregulated glucose can be very dangerous, meaning people with diabetes must monitor glucose levels and take insulin to lower them when necessary. Therefore, diabetes patients will need insulin a few times a day and injections are the fastest way to get insulin into the blood. It means they typically need at least two injections per day which is not only uncomfortable and hard for patients to stick to but also creates potential biohazard waste.
After all, popping a pill is simple, painless, and something that people already do every day. However, as insulin is a fragile molecule, it doesn’t survive the journey through the stomach to the intestines in pill form. Insulin also cannot get through cells by itself because of is a large molecule.
On the other hand, oral insulin drops that when placed under the tongue are quickly and efficiently absorbed by the body to replace the need for insulin injections.
This method is useful for drugs that don’t survive in the stomach. Not only that, it’s effective because the tissue under the tongue contains a lot of capillaries, meaning it allows the drug to diffuse into the bloodstream quickly.
As insulin can’t easily get through cells, the scientists paired it with a cell-penetrating peptide (CPP), made from fish byproducts, that opens a pathway for insulin to cross over cells.
Past experiments also demonstrated that insulin with peptides effectively absorbs into the bloodstream. On the contrary, when there’s no peptide, the peptide insulin remains stuck in the inside lining of the mouth.
Lead researcher Dr Shyh-Dar Li, who developed the CPP with colleagues hopes to deliver quick, painless insulin with no serious side effects.
The new technology needle-free is also expected to remove the risk of cross-contamination, needle pricks, accidental infections, and unsafe disposal of contaminated needles.
