Are your patients struggling to overcome barriers to insulin therapy ? RoboCap may help them soon! Protein-containing drugs get degraded in the acidic environment of the gastrointestinal tract and are also unable to move through the mucus barrier. To overcome these barriers, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a robotic capsule called “RoboCap.” RoboCap has a gelatin outer coat that dissolves in the digestive tract in a pH-dependent manner.
Following that, a tiny motor inside the capsule gets triggered by a change in pH, starts spinning, and propels the capsule through mucus. The spinning motion of the capsule erodes the drug compartment and thus delivers the drug directly to the epithelium. RoboCap was used in swine models to deliver insulin and vancomycin to the small intestines with a 20 to 40-fold increase in bioavailability. RoboCap can also be…
