Context: A team of researchers has developed new ingestible capsules that release a burst of drugs directly inside the stomach or other parts of the digestive system. These capsules can offer an alternative to traditional methods like injections for delivering drugs such as insulin.
Relevance of the topic: Prelims- General idea about new ingestible capsules; Biobioavailability
Advantages of injections over pills:
- Injections are usually used to administer hormones, vaccines, antibodies, or cancer treatments because drugs are usually made of larger biological molecules.
- If swallowed as pill, the larger biological molecules are often quickly destroyed by digestive enzymes or the liver before they can work, limiting their efficacy and increasing the likelihood of potential side effects.
Problems with injections:
- Despite their advantage over pills, injections can lead to infection, skin irritation, and other side effects.
- They can also cause discomfort to patients, making oral alternatives more desirable.
About New Ingestible Capsules
- Development: The inspiration for their development came from cephalopods such as squids and cuttlefish, which use jet propulsion mechanisms to move or release ink.
- Researchers adapted this jetting principle to distribute drugs in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.
- Jet propulsion mechanism ensures that more medication is absorbed before the body breaks it down.
- Mechanism:
- Capsules use compressed carbon dioxide or tightly coiled springs to generate the force needed to propel liquid drugs out of the capsule.
- The gas or spring is kept in a compressed state by a carbohydrate trigger. This trigger dissolves when exposed to humidity or an acidic environment in the stomach. When the trigger dissolves, the gas or spring is allowed to expand, and eject drugs out of the capsule.
- Advantage of the capsule:
- The new capsules have shown high efficiency in bioavailability (the body’s ability to absorb and use drugs) in animal models compared to earlier attempts.