RNA vaccines use to protect against COVID-19 are mostly administer using needles, which many of us aren’t quite comfortable with. MIT scientists have developed a specially shape pill that could administer this vaccine just by swallowing it.
RNA vaccines is that their components can be very sensitive to degradation, especially in the digestive tract.
To make sure the vaccine components don’t degrade in the digestive tract, researchers develop a pill inspire by the shape of the Leopard Tortoise shell.
The pill was originally develop in 2019 for administering drugs like insulin into the lining of the stomach.
In 2021, they decide to test it to deliver large molecules such as monoclonal antibodies in liquid form, and later they tried administering nucleic acids, both proving successful.
The lead author of the study, Dr Ameya Kirtane explain in the study that the particles that make up the pill are made from a type of polymer dubbed poly (beta-amino esters).
The MIT team’s previous work show that branch variants of these polymers are more impactful than linear ones at protecting nucleic acids and infusing them into cells.
They also found that using two of these polymers together works better than just one.
They test this pill on pigs where each one was offer three pills, each containing 50 micrograms of mRNA design to get cells to produce a kind of protein for the purposes of the test.
To put things into perspective, the popular COVID jab by Pfizer only contains 30 micrograms of mRNA.
Researchers then analyse to see the absorption and processing of the test protein.
They found that it had manage to develop it in the stomach but not in other organs.
Study author Dr Alex Abramson state that this could be enough for the pill to work as an oral vaccine.
“There are many immune cells in the gastrointestinal tract, and stimulating the immune system of the gastrointestinal tract is a known way of creating an immune response.”
Dr Alex Abramson hope this treatment could also help cure gastrointestinal issues in the future,
“When you have systemic delivery through intravenous injection or subcutaneous injection, it’s not very easy to target the stomach. We see this as a potential way to treat different diseases that are present in the gastrointestinal tract.”
