An Australian-Norwegian research team wants to make the lives of tens of millions of diabetics easier with a chocolatey invention. It has developed a type of chocolate pill that may make insulin easy to take in the future – as an alternative to the usual injection under the skin, insulin pens and pumps. The researchers recently reported in the journal “Nature Nanotechnology” that the preparation is not only more pleasant to take, but also safer. Dangerous hypoglycemia due to overdoses is not to be feared.
Advertisement
With their innovation, the team was able to solve a dilemma that has generally caused previous attempts at oral insulin administration to fail: If insulin is freely available, it dissolves quickly in the stomach and is simply broken down by the chemically aggressive acids and enzymes there. Stable shells around the hormone can provide relief, but they reduce the bioavailability of insulin, which is essential for survival, in the body – and the effect is only weak.
The researchers’ trick: They attached insulin molecules to nanocrystals made of silver sulfide and also coated these crystals with a biopolymer made from chitosan and glucose. The team writes that the innovative construct reacts differently to different pH values. At very low pH values, such as in the stomach, it does not dissolve afterwards. At neutral pH values, however, stability decreases and insulin can increasingly be absorbed by tissue, as experiments with worms and tissue samples from the duodenum showed. It is also said that the presence of sugar-splitting glucosidase enzymes increases insulin release.
pH and blood sugar initiate release
Insulin is released in the liver, which acts as a type of sugar storage and is the hormone’s most important site of action. “But the shell only dissolves when blood sugar is high. The insulin is released precisely when it is needed,” says project leader Nicholas J. Hunt from the University of Sydney. To make it tasty, the researchers embedded the coated nanoparticles in chocolate.
Because of the need-dependent on-site effect, the new preparation has an important advantage over the syringe. An overdose and thus dangerous hypoglycemia cannot occur, explains co-author Peter McCourt, professor at the Artivc University of Norway (UiT). “When you inject insulin, it spreads throughout the body, where it can cause unwanted side effects.”
Around 425 million people worldwide have diabetes. Around 75 million need insulin injections regularly – including children and people with dementia who often simply don’t want to be pricked. The important hormone would be much easier to administer as a piece of chocolate. It is not for nothing that other research teams are also working on clever, enteric-resistant packaging for insulin. According to the Australian-Norwegian team, none have yet made it into practice.
However, it is also still unclear when patients will be able to benefit from the chocolatey insulin nanocrystal innovation. So far it has only been tested on worms, mice, rats and baboons. In these animal experiments it was proven to be effective and safe, the study says. If everything goes according to plan, a start-up should start its first clinical study next year.
(Older brother)
To home page